22-11-2012, 12:42 PM
SEMINAR REPORT ON MOBILE PHONE CLONING
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ABSTRACT
Are your mobile phone bills unexpectedly high? There’s a chance you are the victim of ‘‘mobile cloning’’. It is also known as cell phone piracy and has been taking place throughout the world since decades. Recently this crime has come to India.
Mobile phones have become a major part of our everyday life. On the one hand, India’s mobile phone market has grown rapidly in the last few years on the back of falling phone tariffs and handset prices, making it one of the fastest growing markets globally. On the other the number of mobile phone subscribers is exceeding that of fixed-line users.
Today millions of mobile phones users, be it Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) or Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), run the risk of having their phones cloned. And the worst part is that there isn’t much that you can do to prevent this.
Such crime first came to light in January 2005 when the Delhi police arrested a person with 20 cell phones, a laptop, a SIM scanner, and a writer. The accused was running an exchange illegally wherein he cloned CDMA-based mobile phones. He used software for the cloning and provided cheap international calls to Indian immigrants in West Asia. A similar racket came to light in Mumbai resulting in the arrest of four mobile dealers
INTRODUCTION
While mobile cloning is an emerging threat for Indian subscribers, it has been happening in other telecom markets since the 1990s, though mostly with regard to CDMA phones. Pleas in an US District Court in 1997 effectively ended West Texas authorities' first case of `phone cloning.' Authorities in the case estimated the loss at $3,000 to $4,000 for each number used. Southwestern Bell claims wireless fraud costs the industry $650 million each year in the US. Some federal agents in the US have called phone cloning an especially `popular' crime because it is hard to trace. Back home, police officers say the Yasin case is just the tip of the iceberg and have asked operators to improve their technology. But the operators claim they can't do much for now. "It's like stealing cars or duplicating credit card numbers. The service providers cannot do much except keep track of the billing pattern of the users. But since the billing cycle is monthly, the damage is done by the time we can detect the mischief," says a Reliance executive.
MOBILE PHONE CLONING
When we look up the dictionary meaning of cloning it states, “ to create the exact replica or a mirror image of an subject understudy. The subject can be any thing living or non-living so here we take into consideration the cellular or mobile phones. So Mobile cloning is copying the identity of one mobile telephone to another mobile telephone. Every electronic device has a working frequency, which plays a crucial role in its operation. Now the question that arises is how is a mobile phone cloned. It is a very complex procedure in which we have to be familiar with the following terms.
GSM and CDMA mobile phones
CDMA is one of the newer digital technologies used in Canada, the US, Australia, and some South-eastern Asian countries. CDMA differs from GSM and TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) by its use of spread spectrum techniques for transmitting voice or data over the air. Rather than dividing the radio frequency spectrum into separate user channels by frequency slices or time slots, spread spectrum technology separates users by assigning them digital codes within the same broad spectrum. Advantages of CDMA include higher user capacity and immunity from interference by other signals.
HOW IS A PHONE CLONED?
Cellular thieves can capture ESN/MINs using devices such as cell phone ESN reader or digital data interpreters (DDI). DDIs are devices specially manufactured to intercept ESN/MINs. By simply sitting near busy roads where the volume of cellular traffic is high, cellular thieves monitoring the radio wave transmissions from the cell phones of legitimate subscribers can capture ESN/MIN pair. Numbers can be recorded by hand, one-by-one, or stored in the box and later downloaded to a computer. ESN/MIN readers can also be used from inside an offender’s home, office, or hotel room, increasing the difficulty of detection. The ESN/MIN pair can be cloned in a number of ways without the knowledge of the carrier or subscriber through the use of electronic scanning devices. After the ESN/MIN pair is captured, the cloner reprograms or alters the microchip of any wireless phone to create a clone of the wireless phone from which the ESN/MIN pair was stolen. The entire programming process takes 10-15 minutes per phone. Any call made with cloned phone are billed to and traced to a legitimate phone account. Innocent citizens end up with unexplained monthly phone bills.
IMPACT OF CLONING
Each year, the mobile phone industry loses millions of dollars in revenue because of the criminal actions of persons who are able to reconfigure mobile phones so that their calls are billed to other phones owned by innocent third persons. Often these cloned phones are used to place hundreds of calls, often long distance, even to foreign countries, resulting in thousands of dollars in airtime and long distance charges. Cellular telephone companies do not require their customers to pay for any charges illegally made to their account, no matter how great the cost. But some portion of the cost of these illegal telephone calls is passed along to cellular telephone consumers as a whole.
Many criminals use cloned cellular telephones for illegal activities, because their calls are not billed to them, and are therefore much more difficult to trace.
His phenomenon is especially prevalent in drug crimes. Drug dealers need to be in constant contact with their sources of supply and their confederates on the streets. Traffickers acquire cloned phones at a minimum cost, make dozens of calls, and then throw the phone away after as little as a days' use. In the same way, criminals who pose a threat to our national security, such as terrorists, have been known to use cloned phones to thwart law enforcement efforts aimed at tracking their whereabouts.
SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM
Cloning, as the crime branch detectives divulge, starts when some one, working for a mobile phone service provider, agrees to sell the security numbers to gray market operators. Every mobile handset has a unique factory-coded electronic serial number and a mobile identification number. The buyer can then program these security numbers into new handsets.
The onus to check the misuse of mobile cloning phenomenon falls on the subscriber himself. The subscribers, according to the officials, should be on the alert and inform the police on suspecting any foul play. It would be advisable for them to ask for the list of outgoing calls, as soon as they realize that they've been overcharged.
CONCLUSION:
Presently the cellular phone industry relies on common law (fraud and theft) and in-house counter measures to address cellular phone fraud. Mobile Cloning
Is in initial stages in India so preventive steps should be taken by the network provider and the Government the enactment of legislation to prosecute crimes related to cellular phones is not viewed as a priority, however. It is essential that intended mobile crime legislation be comprehensive enough to incorporate cellular phone fraud, in particular "cloning fraud" as a specific crime.
[attachment=40614]
ABSTRACT
Are your mobile phone bills unexpectedly high? There’s a chance you are the victim of ‘‘mobile cloning’’. It is also known as cell phone piracy and has been taking place throughout the world since decades. Recently this crime has come to India.
Mobile phones have become a major part of our everyday life. On the one hand, India’s mobile phone market has grown rapidly in the last few years on the back of falling phone tariffs and handset prices, making it one of the fastest growing markets globally. On the other the number of mobile phone subscribers is exceeding that of fixed-line users.
Today millions of mobile phones users, be it Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) or Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), run the risk of having their phones cloned. And the worst part is that there isn’t much that you can do to prevent this.
Such crime first came to light in January 2005 when the Delhi police arrested a person with 20 cell phones, a laptop, a SIM scanner, and a writer. The accused was running an exchange illegally wherein he cloned CDMA-based mobile phones. He used software for the cloning and provided cheap international calls to Indian immigrants in West Asia. A similar racket came to light in Mumbai resulting in the arrest of four mobile dealers
INTRODUCTION
While mobile cloning is an emerging threat for Indian subscribers, it has been happening in other telecom markets since the 1990s, though mostly with regard to CDMA phones. Pleas in an US District Court in 1997 effectively ended West Texas authorities' first case of `phone cloning.' Authorities in the case estimated the loss at $3,000 to $4,000 for each number used. Southwestern Bell claims wireless fraud costs the industry $650 million each year in the US. Some federal agents in the US have called phone cloning an especially `popular' crime because it is hard to trace. Back home, police officers say the Yasin case is just the tip of the iceberg and have asked operators to improve their technology. But the operators claim they can't do much for now. "It's like stealing cars or duplicating credit card numbers. The service providers cannot do much except keep track of the billing pattern of the users. But since the billing cycle is monthly, the damage is done by the time we can detect the mischief," says a Reliance executive.
MOBILE PHONE CLONING
When we look up the dictionary meaning of cloning it states, “ to create the exact replica or a mirror image of an subject understudy. The subject can be any thing living or non-living so here we take into consideration the cellular or mobile phones. So Mobile cloning is copying the identity of one mobile telephone to another mobile telephone. Every electronic device has a working frequency, which plays a crucial role in its operation. Now the question that arises is how is a mobile phone cloned. It is a very complex procedure in which we have to be familiar with the following terms.
GSM and CDMA mobile phones
CDMA is one of the newer digital technologies used in Canada, the US, Australia, and some South-eastern Asian countries. CDMA differs from GSM and TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) by its use of spread spectrum techniques for transmitting voice or data over the air. Rather than dividing the radio frequency spectrum into separate user channels by frequency slices or time slots, spread spectrum technology separates users by assigning them digital codes within the same broad spectrum. Advantages of CDMA include higher user capacity and immunity from interference by other signals.
HOW IS A PHONE CLONED?
Cellular thieves can capture ESN/MINs using devices such as cell phone ESN reader or digital data interpreters (DDI). DDIs are devices specially manufactured to intercept ESN/MINs. By simply sitting near busy roads where the volume of cellular traffic is high, cellular thieves monitoring the radio wave transmissions from the cell phones of legitimate subscribers can capture ESN/MIN pair. Numbers can be recorded by hand, one-by-one, or stored in the box and later downloaded to a computer. ESN/MIN readers can also be used from inside an offender’s home, office, or hotel room, increasing the difficulty of detection. The ESN/MIN pair can be cloned in a number of ways without the knowledge of the carrier or subscriber through the use of electronic scanning devices. After the ESN/MIN pair is captured, the cloner reprograms or alters the microchip of any wireless phone to create a clone of the wireless phone from which the ESN/MIN pair was stolen. The entire programming process takes 10-15 minutes per phone. Any call made with cloned phone are billed to and traced to a legitimate phone account. Innocent citizens end up with unexplained monthly phone bills.
IMPACT OF CLONING
Each year, the mobile phone industry loses millions of dollars in revenue because of the criminal actions of persons who are able to reconfigure mobile phones so that their calls are billed to other phones owned by innocent third persons. Often these cloned phones are used to place hundreds of calls, often long distance, even to foreign countries, resulting in thousands of dollars in airtime and long distance charges. Cellular telephone companies do not require their customers to pay for any charges illegally made to their account, no matter how great the cost. But some portion of the cost of these illegal telephone calls is passed along to cellular telephone consumers as a whole.
Many criminals use cloned cellular telephones for illegal activities, because their calls are not billed to them, and are therefore much more difficult to trace.
His phenomenon is especially prevalent in drug crimes. Drug dealers need to be in constant contact with their sources of supply and their confederates on the streets. Traffickers acquire cloned phones at a minimum cost, make dozens of calls, and then throw the phone away after as little as a days' use. In the same way, criminals who pose a threat to our national security, such as terrorists, have been known to use cloned phones to thwart law enforcement efforts aimed at tracking their whereabouts.
SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM
Cloning, as the crime branch detectives divulge, starts when some one, working for a mobile phone service provider, agrees to sell the security numbers to gray market operators. Every mobile handset has a unique factory-coded electronic serial number and a mobile identification number. The buyer can then program these security numbers into new handsets.
The onus to check the misuse of mobile cloning phenomenon falls on the subscriber himself. The subscribers, according to the officials, should be on the alert and inform the police on suspecting any foul play. It would be advisable for them to ask for the list of outgoing calls, as soon as they realize that they've been overcharged.
CONCLUSION:
Presently the cellular phone industry relies on common law (fraud and theft) and in-house counter measures to address cellular phone fraud. Mobile Cloning
Is in initial stages in India so preventive steps should be taken by the network provider and the Government the enactment of legislation to prosecute crimes related to cellular phones is not viewed as a priority, however. It is essential that intended mobile crime legislation be comprehensive enough to incorporate cellular phone fraud, in particular "cloning fraud" as a specific crime.