US military personnel and contractors in the Middle East were targeted in a coordinated phone-tracking campaign before and during the Iran war, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing telecom data, cybersecurity experts and officials familiar with the matter.
“Iran absolutely has capabilities to get real-time, immediate, and continuous location information,” Gary Miller, a senior research fellow at cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab, told the FT.
“It would surprise me very much if Iran were not using SS7, or mobile network access in the region, to track US users.”
Telecom networks under pressure
Middle Eastern telecom networks, according to the report, blocked repeated requests known as SS7 pings, which can reveal the approximate location of phones roaming outside their home networks.
Two cybersecurity experts who reviewed the data told the FT the activity appeared to be part of a coordinated effort to locate specific devices.
The tracking attempts came in the build-up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran in late February and continued during the early days of the conflict, when Iran launched missile and drone attacks on US forces and military installations across the region.
A person familiar with the matter told the FT that Persian Gulf officials suspected Iran or allied groups had exploited roaming agreements with regional mobile operators to track US personnel.
Separately, a US official speaking anonymously said actors linked to Iran were also believed to have used commercial advertising databases to locate phones in Iraqi Kurdistan.
US lawmakers renew security concerns
US Central Command told Congress in April that it had received multiple threat reports about adversaries exploiting commercial location data to monitor or target US personnel deployed in the region.
However, Centcom said it had taken force-protection measures to safeguard its forces, while a US official told the FT there was no evidence that data tracking had played a significant role in attacks.
At least some blocked tracking attempts could be linked to an Iranian mobile operator based on a shared technical fingerprint.
“This appears to be very specific user targeting,” Miller told the FT. “They are targeting specific devices.”
The Iranian embassy in London did not immediately respond to the newspaper's request for comment.
The report also said Iran was suspected of using commercially available advertising technology to identify hotels housing US government employees and contractors.
Advertising identifiers assigned to smartphones can enable devices to be tracked without directly compromising the phones themselves.
US lawmakers cited by the FT said the findings underscored longstanding concerns about the military's exposure through commercial location data.
Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator, said he had warned successive administrations for years about the national security risks, while Republican Representative Pat Harrigan said legislation was needed to prevent technology companies from selling location data linked to government employees.
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