The US government has confirmed someone spied on smartphones in America’s capital using a fake cellphone tower – and miscreants abused SS7 weaknesses to swipe citizens’ personal information from a major wireless carrier. On Friday, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) released a letter (PDF) he received from the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month that admits malicious attackers used SS7 – the protocol that glues cellular networks together – to extract people’s private information from one unnamed mobile network.

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