Hacker conference Chaos Communication Congress 31c3 is under way in Hamburg, Germany right now where three SS7 talks have revealed the ease of invasive cell phone surveillance.

In the past, surveillance vendors have gained access to SS7 by way of a local phone operator, a misused leased “global title,” or through a government connection.

The maligned SS7 protocol was designed in the 1980s, long before mainstream cellular use, and security and privacy shortcomings have not kept up with the times, Engel said.

But SS7 has been a wildly successful protocol, and is used by the vast majority of global operators across multiple generations of telecoms architecture. More modern and secure signalling systems do ...

Signaling System No.7 (SS7), as the protocol is known, is used by more than 800 telcos around the world, allowing customers in one country to send text messages to users in different countries.