I accidentally logged hundreds of thousands of phone calls to military bases
I accidentally logged phone calls to military bases
A security researcher bought an expired domain for 5€ and gained control of DNS for phone-network infrastructure covering three British territories, including Diego Garcia. Logs revealed hundreds of thousands of ENUM queries for calls to military bases. The researcher reported it to the UK's NCSC, which eventually took over the domain.
A nation state with an interest in what's happening on those bases would have absolutely loved sitting on this for months without anyone noticing.
- toast0
> It never really took off though, and even back in its early days it saw barely any use. Over the years it just deteriorated further, and today it's basically completely dead.
It's actually not completely dead... It's just (almost) completely non-public.
You can subscribe to services to get number porting information where the interface is basically e164.arpa/ENUM queries to a private nameserver over a VPN. I don't know the details, the cost was high enough that it didn't make sense for my employer to pursue it.
- dmd
I'm mostly amazed the author didn't land in jail, which is the normally the response to reporting this kind of thing to authorities.
- chaz6
It is a shame they did not actually set up a SIP server and see if any of those requests turned into actual call terminations.
There is another schema called TRIP [1] - telephony routing over ip that uses a number format "1234*1455" designed to be entered on a standard phone keypad. When I registered my ITAD (internet telephony administrative domain, the RHS of a TRIP number) I was lucky enough to get one that matches my local dialling code!
- cryptolobster
It's funny how such holes can remain for years, and no one notices until someone stumbles upon them. It's interesting that no serious organization wanted to address the issue until it was discovered that the military was involved.
It's a shame the author wasn't rewarded but at least the story can now be told over a beer.
- dkga
I enjoyed reading this much more than anything I read here recently. In particular I like how it absolutely shows that somethings just… fall through the cracks!