(31.12.2020)
Aliada, according to the suit, is a group of cyberweapon companies whose products are branded under the name Intellexa. In May 2019, it added, the group recruited Eran Beck, a former head of the Military Intelligence’s cyber department, as its director of development.
Invoices seen by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism suggest Rayzone, a corporate spy agency that provides its government clients with “geolocation tools”, used an intermediary in 2018 to lease an access point into the telecoms network via Sure Guernsey, a mobile operator in the Channel Islands.
Such access points, known in the telecoms industry as “global titles”, provide a route into a decades-old global messaging system known as SS7, which allows mobile operators to connect users around the world. It is not uncommon for mobile companies to lease out such access.
The investigation has found that private intelligence companies are able to rent access from mobile phone operators and this can then be exploited to allow the tracking of the physical location of users across the world. They are also potentially able to intercept calls and other private data, including bank accounts and emails.
These intrusions, which are very widely exploited, rely on commands designed to help phone operators track their customers’ whereabouts. Such commands, known as “signals”, are sent via a kind of global switchboard for the telecoms industry called SS7.