Description
Mobile telephony is a critical aspect of our modern society: through telephone calls,
it is possible to reach almost anyone around the globe. However, every mobile telephone
call placed implicitly leaks the user's location to the telephony service provider (TSP).
This privacy leakage is due to the fundamental nature of mobile telephony calls that
must connect to a local base station to receive service and place calls. Thus, the TSP
can track the physical location of the user for every call that they place. While the
The Internet is similar in this regard, privacy-preserving technologies such as Tor allow
users to connect to websites anonymously (without revealing to their ISP the site
that they are visiting). In this thesis, the scheme presented, called shadow calling,
to allow geolocation anonymous calling from legacy mobile devices. In this way,
the call is placed from the same number, however, the TSP will not know the user's
physical location. The scheme does not require any change on the network side and
can be used on current mobile networks. The scheme implemented is for the GSM
(commonly referred to as 2G) network, as it is the most widely used mode of mobile
telephony communication. The feasibility of our scheme is demonstrated through the
prototype. Shadow calling, which renders the users geolocation anonymous, will be
beneficial for users such as journalists, human rights activists in hostile nations, or
other privacy-demanding users.
it is possible to reach almost anyone around the globe. However, every mobile telephone
call placed implicitly leaks the user's location to the telephony service provider (TSP).
This privacy leakage is due to the fundamental nature of mobile telephony calls that
must connect to a local base station to receive service and place calls. Thus, the TSP
can track the physical location of the user for every call that they place. While the
The Internet is similar in this regard, privacy-preserving technologies such as Tor allow
users to connect to websites anonymously (without revealing to their ISP the site
that they are visiting). In this thesis, the scheme presented, called shadow calling,
to allow geolocation anonymous calling from legacy mobile devices. In this way,
the call is placed from the same number, however, the TSP will not know the user's
physical location. The scheme does not require any change on the network side and
can be used on current mobile networks. The scheme implemented is for the GSM
(commonly referred to as 2G) network, as it is the most widely used mode of mobile
telephony communication. The feasibility of our scheme is demonstrated through the
prototype. Shadow calling, which renders the users geolocation anonymous, will be
beneficial for users such as journalists, human rights activists in hostile nations, or
other privacy-demanding users.
Details
Title
- Shadow Phone and Ghost SIM: A Step Toward Geolocation Anonymous Calling
Contributors
- Pinto, Gerard Lawrence (Author)
- Doupe, Adam (Thesis advisor)
- Ahn, Gail-Joon (Committee member)
- Zhao, Ziming (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2017
Subjects
Resource Type
Collections this item is in
Note
- Masters Thesis Computer Science 2017