The Enemy with SIM

March 22, 2012

Today, I am in Rome. And when you are in Rome... I try to read like the Romans do. In this case Telecom Italia has proven once again that the enemy is within. Having enabled "Gangs" or Mafia to distribute and perhaps generate their own SIM cards. The Italian Government is trying to get its arms around how big the scam was.

A few aspects of the scam are important to understand.

- This enabled unknown identities to be used by organized crime, going well beyond the simple use of prepaid.

- The undocumented numbers added to cost to the base for the coverage.

- It supported a black market for stolen phones.

My biggest point about this issue is once again the backdoor of Security is the weakest link. The other day I was with a friend who is working on a security audit system. He wanted me to see the value of his system in priortizing the fixes. I told him that it was good to see the links of the system and to get a report. His solution was cheaper than an external audit and he could find a market, but the reality was that the internal breaches always outweigh the external in my mind.

Tags: Related tags: system