Essay On Mobile Cloning

ABSTRACT

Mobile phones have become the most important and integral part of today’s lifestyle. This latest mode of communication is considered as most significant as it involves ‘3e’s, ease of use, economic and efficient. As the money is involved in this business, it is subjected to fraud. The more sophisticated and advanced security mechanisms are regrettably not up to the mark. The endless possibilities and applications which are now designed and implemented allure the gray and dark users to make the misuse of this communication medium. The major threat to mobile phone is from cloning. Unexpectedly high mobile phone bills and malicious nature of service are the major symptoms of possibility of mobile cloning. Following paper introduces about the history of mobile cloning, recent trends and possible precautions.

Keywords: Cloning, CDMA, GSM, ESN/MIN.

1. INTRODUCTION

2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF CELL PHONE CLONING

Cloning of mobile phones is the done by copying phones or subscribers information from one to another device for purposes of obtaining free calls, using different services, for secret information and data. The newer cell phone becomes the accurate imitation of the original cell phone like a twin. As a result, while the services are used from the original phone as well as the twin phone, only the original cell phone is billed. Cloning is performed in high usage area, multiple service providing and fraudulent environments.

A Software tool is used for modifying the and configuring the cell phone. The EEPROM chip is replaced of modified with a new chip which will reconfigure ESN (Electronic Serial Number) or IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) and via MIN (Mobile Identification Number) software. When the ESN/MIN pair had changed successfully then an effective clone of the original phone has created.

Cloning required access to ESN and MIN pairs. ESN and MIN pairs were exposed in several