zlacker

>>eloran+(OP)
Hi there! I'm the owner and operator of Broadcastify, which is the platform that powers all the apps that provide police scanners and public safety communications online. I'm an active HN reader and would be glad to answer any questions folks have.

It's an interesting business to be in these days...

>>blanto+h7
Is there a way of legitimately detecting Stingrays? I understand this is the kind of situation where they are actively deployed despite all the social awareness.

>>kennxf+ba
I guess if you were to build a map of static cell towers, it would be easy to see if a new one suddenly pops up.

>>swebs+Dg
additional temporary "towers" are sometimes added when very high but transient network loads are anticipated (such as a music festival, or county fair, etc.). not all new towers are sniffers.

>>jackha+cu1
If anyone is interested in trying to work around this, I have a few ideas for how to try distinguish a real and fake cell. Temporary event "pop-up" networks should announce valid neighbouring cells.

Your baseband (radio) might expose neighbour cell data - iPhone field test menu shows the announced neighbour data.

Hypothesis is that a rogue tower will not have valid neighbour cells announced. They could try listen in for valid ones and advertise those.

A lot of the ways to detect will depend on the generation of network being spoofed - 4G networks will also advertise signalling for legacy 2G and 3G circuit switched networks. Rogue sites might not.