2024-05-29
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The Economist Hello, this is Alok Jha,
host of Babbage, our weekly podcast on science and technology.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've chosen an unmissable article from the latest edition of The Economist.
Please do have a listen.
In the mid-1960s,
enterprising hackers realised that if they blew a particular toy whistle down the phone,
they could trick the network into routing their call anywhere free.
When phone networks got wind of this,
they changed how the system worked by splitting the channel carrying the voice signal from the one managing the call.
One result was the signalling system 7, which became a global standard in 1980.
SS7 stopped phone freaks as they were known, but the system,
built when there were only a handful of state-controlled telecoms companies,
has become woefully inadequate for the mobile age,
leaving dangerous vulnerabilities at the heart of international phone networks.
It is time to fix them.