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British soldier ignored order to pull his SIM card, then got blackmailed (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by throws_lemy@reddthat.com to c/technology@piefed.social

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A British soldier disobeyed a direct order to remove the SIM card from his cellphone before being deployed to a part of Estonia, approximately 90 miles west of the Russian border.

As a result of his refusal to engage in this element of operational security (opsec), the soldier, had his phone hacked, and nude photos of himself were stolen and used as blackmail against him.

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[–] bequirtle@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

?? the real news here is that just having a SIM card in your phone means some rando can steal your photos..

are we sure this wasn't just a scammer? lmao

[–] randombullet@programming.dev 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's likely related to SS7

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_System_No._7

Additionally, if you're connected to a evil twin tower, they can hold and decrypt your packets. Especially if you're sending messages over SMS and MMS. Those are trivial to decrypt if they're even encrypted to begin with.

[–] bequirtle@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I guess he must've been sending the photos somewhere, then? I was confused because the article seems to say they were taken directly off his phone

[–] randombullet@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

Good point. Although good hacking and manipulation can seem like it's a local compromise.

Or perhaps the automatic backup of the photos could have gotten decrypted? Shooting in the dark.

There are zero click zero days that are used all the time so perhaps the roaming sims of "hostile" countries are sent the zero click payloads.