Anyone played around with mobile interception?

[Shyft]

I'm thinking something along these lines will be my next project. I watched the Defcon talk from a couple of years ago and it got me interested. So has anyone here played around with intercepting mobile phone traffic, or setting up OpenBTS/IMSI catcher? Are you using a USRP or a cheaper alternative? What's your software/hardware setup? Have you had much success? Encountered any major problems? etc.

[Timon]

Only interception i have been involved in was back in the old analog mobile days, with a few modified motorola mobiles, remember how you could put them in programming mode / test mode and open up the monitor and tx feature, and could select the channel number, lol good times

[Freak]

the way it works now is it sniffs the 3G and saves it to a file and the contents have to be deciphered. I read about it 3 years ago. So 3G is not even worth apparently trying to listen in (cant be done on the fly)

[Nick]

I have much knowlage in this topic, may I suggest a starting point be http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/108 ... ined-radio

[Shyft]

Yer I was looking at that one although I'm not sure if I wanna spend that kind of money on a kickstarter one

[Nick]

USRP has been tried & tested, the OpenBTS team have dedicated hardware but that's more expensive and less flexible than a USRP.

[branleur]

The RTL-SDR is all the rage these days and only costs around $10. Interestingly enough you can use it to pick up GSM signals along with a whole bunch of other stuff.

http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial ... wireshark/