Sunday, February 23, 2014

MONKEYCALENDAR: NSA Exploit of the Day

Today's item from the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog:
MONKEYCALENDAR (TS//SI//REL) MONKEYCALENDAR is a software implant for GSM (Global System for Mobile communication) subscriber identity module (SIM) cards. This implant pulls geolocation information from a target handset and exfiltrates it to a user-defined phone number via short message service (SMS).
(TS//SI//REL) Modern SIM cards (Phase 2+) have an application program interface known as the SIM Toolkit (STK). The STK has a suite of proactive commands that allow the SIM card to issue commands and make requests to the handset. MONKEYCALENDAR uses STK commands to retrieve location information and to exfiltrate data via SMS. After the MONKEYCALENDAR file is compiled, the program is loaded onto the SIM card using either a Universal Serial Bus (USB) smartcard reader or via over-the-air provisioning. In both cases, keys to the card may be required to install the application depending on the service provider's security configuration.
Unit Cost: $0
Status: Released, not deployed.
Page, with graphics, is here. General information about TAO and the catalog is here.

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