Security News > 2022 > November > Iran’s Digital Surveillance Tools Leaked

According to these internal documents, SIAM is a computer system that works behind the scenes of Iranian cellular networks, providing its operators a broad menu of remote commands to alter, disrupt, and monitor how customers use their phones.

The tools can slow their data connections to a crawl, break the encryption of phone calls, track the movements of individuals or large groups, and produce detailed metadata summaries of who spoke to whom, when, and where.

Such a system could help the government invisibly quash the ongoing protests ­-or those of tomorrow ­-an expert who reviewed the SIAM documents told The Intercept.

SIAM gives the government's Communications Regulatory Authority ­-Iran's telecommunications regulator ­-turnkey access to the activities and capabilities of the country's mobile users.

"Based on CRA rules and regulations all telecom operators must provide CRA direct access to their system for query customers information and change their services via web service," reads an English-language document obtained by The Intercept.

News URL

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/11/irans-digital-surveillance-tools-leaked.html