To fill these gaps in our knowledge, we have created an open source project called Rayhunter.1 It is developed to run on an Orbic mobile hotspot (Amazon, Ebay) which is available for $20 or less at the time of this writing. We have tried to make Rayhunter as easy as possible to install and use, regardless of your level of technical knowledge. We hope that activists, journalists, and others will run these devices all over the world and help us collect data about the usage and capabilities of cell-site simulators (please see our legal disclaimer.)
Rayhunter works by intercepting, storing, and analyzing the control traffic (but not user traffic, such as web requests) between the mobile hotspot Rayhunter runs on and the cell tower to which it’s connected. Rayhunter analyzes the traffic in real-time and looks for suspicious events, which could include unusual requests like the base station (cell tower) trying to downgrade your connection to 2G which is vulnerable to further attacks, or the base station requesting your IMSI under suspicious circumstances.
interesting and highlights the dated nature of some of our technologies however your conclusion may be heavily localized, friend.
For example, traveling to Korea as a visitor, without a residency visa, you’re only able to get prepaid mobile services, which are only allowed on the 4G networks of all three carriers.
The 5G services are exclusively available for postpaid subscribers, the vast overwhelming majority of which are citizens, and many of which will still be on 4G-only handsets because of income and device reasons, despite a comprehensive 5G build-out that should be the end of much of the world.
So, targeting the 4G network for testing could still be informative in many places. Places with state-run news agencies, or places that receive internationally subsidized technology transfers for their self services, likely to have Huawei tower gear somewhere in their stack.