Federal Police investigations showed that employees of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN) used a secret program to monitor disaffected during the government of former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL).
The inquiry pointed out that the tool, called Firstmile, allowed Brazil’s telephone system failures to identify the location of previously selected targets cell phones. In concluding the investigation, which commanded the agency in the last government.
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Both branch and the former president did not comment on the indictment. On previous occasions, they denied the existence of parallel structure in the agency and participation in illegal spying. Abin, in turn, has claimed to be “available to the authorities” and stressed that the investigated facts occurred in “past management”.
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The use of the software was revealed by Globo in March last year. Since then, the inquiry filed by the PF revealed that members of the Judiciary Summit, the House of Representatives, as well as journalists, have been victims of the largest spy scandal in the country’s history.
In a public hearing at the Federal Supreme Court (STF), the Federal Police (PF) and the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) explained that FirstMile, developed by Israeli company Cognyte (former Verint), obtained, through telephone antennas, data from cell phones and coordinates containing the location of the equipment.
The antennas are technically called Base Radio Station (ERB). The system allows you to know which antenna that phone is connecting and thus point the location.
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“See the severity of this: a foreign company, in the case of Israel, accesses our critical telephone infrastructure and with that it simulates an antenna, an ERB that will make it possible to access the citizen’s device including entering spy agents to access all the data of the device,” said Federal Police Intelligence Director Rodrigo Morais Fernandes, at the meeting convened by Minister Cristiano Zanin.
In a shared PF report with the court, the experts describe that, when selecting a particular target, “the location is positioned on the map based on the coordinates, along with precision radius.” The Israeli tool is mainly worth the vulnerabilities of mobile networks that support 2G and 3G technologies that use a call routing system and messaging called “Signaling Systems No. 7”, according to PF.
This protocol is used to communicate calls between the same operators and different companies. The PF report highlights that this system, used in virtually the entire mobile network in Brazil, does not verify the legitimacy of a request. That is, “responds” with mobile data for both the traditional telephone operator and other systems.
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“There is a consensus on the existence of various safety vulnerabilities in mobile networks which make use of SS7,” says the report, adding that this system is still widely used even with new communication technologies (4G and 5G).
At the same hearing, Anatel’s Obligation Superintendent (SCO), Gustavo Santana Borges, said that authorizing the use of commercial software, especially foreigners, is an incentive to exploit vulnerability and perform attacks on telephone networks, even with court order.
The complexity of the telephone network in Brazil is pointed out by researchers as one of the main challenges to remedy vulnerabilities. In all, 15,000 telecommunications service providers operate in the country.
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“And even with the rigorous adoption of security patterns by these companies, it is not possible to ensure that there are no vulnerabilities,” said the superintendent. “Today we are totally connected and dependent on the phone and in a little while not only us, people, but also things, cars, traffic, everything forwards to a much more digital environment, inserted there artificial intelligence issues.”
