Ability's Unlimited Inteception app has sold for as much as $5 million, though the cost can go up to $20 million, the firm's CEO told Forbes last year. Surveillance companies, such as Israeli firm Ability Inc., are also actively selling services to spy on targets over the SS7 network. That occurred in Germany this year, when crooks were able to use the same methods as the Positive researchers, but to pilfer funds from bank accounts of O2-Telefonica customers.

Indeed, criminals have, on at least one occasion, used SS7 vulnerabilities to carry out an attack. (Some claimed Interconnector was a scam). They could then simply head to the Coinbase website and do another password reset using the email they'd compromised.Īs for how others might do that, Kurbatov added: 'The risk lies in the fact that cybercriminals can potentially buy access to SS7 illegitimately dark web.' He pointed to dark web sites, like Interconnector, that have been seen selling SS7 services. By exploiting SS7 weaknesses they were able to intercept text messages containing those codes, allowing them to choose a new password and take control of the Gmail account.

Once the email account was identified, the hackers initiated a password reset process, asking one-time authorization codes to be sent to the victim's phone. In their attack, the Positive researchers first went to Gmail, using Google's service to find an email account with just a phone number. (Typically, the SS7 network is used by telecoms companies to talk with one another, normally for shifting customers between operators when roaming). They allow anyone with access to that part of the telecoms backbone to send and receive messages to and from cellphones, with various attacks allowing silent interception of SMS texts, calls and location data. SS7 weaknesses, despite fixes being available for years, remain open.

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