Re:Why Is Location Data No Longer Private?
by ForHackernews on Saturday May 26, 2018 @05:26PM
(#17164329)
Leaving aside the SIM card, there's no way to really know what the baseband is up to: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/170874-the-secret-seco...
SIM cards do run some sophisticated software, e.g. a. Java Card runtime.
Even with something running on it, that’s not automatically gonna give it access to any other hardware component in the phone. The phone itself is only interested in using it for identification.
Re:Why Is Location Data No Longer Private?
by mehrdadn on Saturday May 26, 2018 @05:45PM
(#17164418)
> Even with something running on it, that’s not automatically gonna give it access to any other hardware component in the phone. The phone itself is only interested in using it for identification.
I can't tell if this is true or false, but it seems that in either case, access to the SIM can imply access location data:
> With the all-important (and till-now elusive) encryption key, Nohl could send a virus to the SIM card, which could then send premium text messages, collect location data, make premium calls or re-route calls.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/07/21/sim-cards...
The way the location tracking works is simply by logging what phone connected to the cell tower, at the tower itself. To be able to adjust the power the radio component needs to output (to get a good signal), it needs to know the distance to the tower. You get location by then correlating with multiple towers, because the phone has to choose which one it has the strongest reception to, and therefore has to gather data from all nearby towers.
In short: that’s not how a SIM card works.