Iran exploits SS7 to track US troops
Citizen Lab researcher describes Iran using SS7 cellular network flaws to locate US military personnel during the Iran conflict.
Sourcecitizenlab.ca — open the original
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In an interview with Cape Cellular, Citizen Lab senior fellow Gary Miller detailed how Iran has leveraged longstanding vulnerabilities in the global SS7 telecom interconnect protocol to track the location of US military personnel during recent hostilities. SS7, a signaling protocol dating to the 1970s that underpins international roaming and call routing, has been publicly known to be exploitable for over fifteen years, yet mobile operators have failed to fully remediate the underlying weaknesses.
Miller also referenced a related Citizen Lab report on commercial surveillance vendors that abuse the same interconnect ecosystem to geolocate and track targets on behalf of paying clients, illustrating that both state actors and private surveillance firms continue to exploit the same infrastructure gaps. He characterized the persistence of these attacks as evidence of a systemic, industry-wide security failure among mobile network operators rather than an isolated incident.
The piece is an analyst commentary rather than a technical incident report, with no specific indicators, malware, or CVEs disclosed. Its significance lies in reaffirming that SS7-based location tracking remains a viable and actively used capability against high-value targets, including military personnel, despite years of public awareness and available mitigations such as SS7 firewalls.
Source reporting: https://citizenlab.ca/how-iran-uses-cellular-infrastructure-to-target-us-military-phones
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