Engineer turned office printer in device for spying
Developer Julian Oliver demonstrated that even seemingly harmless devices such as office printers can be used for spying.
In the framework of the project for the study of the masking capabilities of the base stations of cellular communication under other objects (trees, Church steeples, etc.), Oliver has developed a compact transmitter of mobile station standard GSM-900 and put it in a normal office printer HP Laserjet 1320.
A device called the Stealth Cell Tower constructed on the basis of the single-Board Raspberry Pi computer 3 and is equipped with two antennas, software-defined transmitter BladeRF x 40 and a few cables.
Stealth Cell Tower functions as a fake cell tower, is able to detect nearby phones and send SMS messages supposedly from friends of the victim contacts. This station does not necessarily know the number.
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The functions of the Stealth Cell Tower includes the ability to print a transcript containing various information, including the text of the message identifier IMSI of the phone, and other information allowing to identify the victim.
According to the developer, such a device can be used during the actual attacks, for example, to send phishing messages or the implementation of the attack “man in the middle”.
