Ask HN: How is NSA able to hack phone systems in different countries?

I thought it would be impossible to hack phone systems of different countries? How is NSA able to do it??

Well, the vendors for many of telco products are US-based, so they may (un)voluntarily cooperate with the NSA. AT&T (though, a provider, not a vendor) for example has a proven history of voluntary cooperation with the NSA.

Then, companies with subsidies in the US (or US-owned local providers) might also be subject to US law.

And for the GSM stuff... well, we've seen countless threads about pwning GSM with equipment for less than $3K. The NSA has antennae e.g. in embassies (Vienna, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich to name a few), so it's dead easy for them to do GSM snooping.

Furthermore, we know about the coding quality of Huawei/ZTE consumer equipment - I bet my *ss that their "enterprise grade" stuff isn't secured any better, thus making hacks easier.

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