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A comment on 13,500 Vivo Smartphones found running on same IMEI number. Parent comment

Re:13,500 Vivo Smartphones found running on same IMEI number by toast0 on Saturday June 06, 2020 @01:29PM (#23440808)
It might make things difficult for emergency calls without a SIM? It's been a while since I looked at protocol spec around that, I don't know if you can get a TMSI without an IMSI, if you can, things would probably be OK as long as two phones didn't turn on and access the same tower at once.
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Re:13,500 Vivo Smartphones found running on same IMEI number by stefan_ on Saturday June 06, 2020 @01:37PM (#23440868)
It's like the MAC address of your smartphone WiFi radio. Yes, you'll get problems if there are two identical ones in the same cell, but in practice randomizing the MAC works perfectly fine.
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Re:13,500 Vivo Smartphones found running on same IMEI number by yuubi on Saturday June 06, 2020 @02:07PM (#23441097)
Except not. The MAC-layer identity in LTE is the RNTI, which is temporarily assigned by each cell before the mobile transmits any sort of unique ID.
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