Cybersecurity

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/3159641

Archived version

Across the world, phone networks carry billions of passwords and login codes on a daily basis. Tech companies need to keep their subscribers logged in to their apps and accounts with maximum efficiency, wherever they might be. So these security codes need to get from Silicon Valley to everywhere, as quickly (and as cheaply) as possible. For most people they are a necessary annoyance, until they are breached with damaging consequences.

Companies, including banks and Big Tech, don’t send login codes to their customers directly. This would be costly and inefficient. Instead they rely on a sprawling and opaque network of contractors and subcontractors, each of which promises to shave off a part of the sending cost in return for market share. This is what the industry calls “lowest cost routing”. The catch is that any of these middleman companies can see everything transmitted. The codes that come saying “Do not share with anyone” might in fact already have been shared with more or less anyone.

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Lighthouse obtained a cache of almost 100 million data packets from a phone industry source. The data gave a unique insight into telecom traffic passing through the network of a controversial Swiss outfit. Millions of these packets contained “A2P” (application-to-person) SMS messages. We analysed these to identify senders, recipients and type of message content.

We found millions of sensitive security codes and logins getting sent via Fink Telecom Services. The logins related to services from some of the world’s largest tech companies – including Google, Meta and Amazon; banks and crypto exchanges; dating sites and online marketplaces; and messaging apps including WhatsApp, Viber and Signal. Overall we identified over 1000 companies sending logins to their customers via the network run by maverick telecom entrepreneur Andreas Fink. The text messages we were looking at often told us the account names as well as the login codes and phone numbers.

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