(CBS) "60 Minutes"- Transcript: Hacking Your Phone

Interview

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Congressman Lieu was on a U.S. network using the phone we lent him when he was part of our hacking demonstration from Berlin.

Sharyn Alfonsi: I just want to play for you something we were able to capture off of your phone.

Mark on recording: Hi Ted, it's Mark, how are you?

Rep. Ted Lieu on recording: I'm good.

Mark on recording: I sent you some revisions on the letter to the N.S.A., regarding the data collection.

Rep. Ted Lieu: Wow.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What is your reaction to knowing that they were listening to all of your calls?

Rep. Ted Lieu: I have two. First, it's really creepy. And second, it makes me angry.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Makes you angry, why?

Rep. Ted Lieu: They could hear any call of pretty much anyone who has a smartphone. It could be stock trades you want someone to execute. It could be calls with a bank.

Karsten Nohl's team automatically logged the number of every phone that called Congressman Lieu -- which means there's a lot more damage that could be done than just intercepting that one phone call. A malicious hacker would be able to target and attack every one of the other phones too.

Sharyn Alfonsi : So give us an idea, without being too specific, of the types of people that would be in a congressman's phone.

Rep. Ted Lieu: There are other members of Congress-- other elected officials. Last year, the president of the United States called me on my cellphone. And we discussed some issues. So if the hackers were listening in, they would know that phone conversation. And that's immensely troubling.

Nohl told us the SS7 flaw is a significant risk mostly to political leaders and business executives whose private communications could be of high value to hackers. The ability to intercept cellphone calls through the SS7 network is an open secret among the world's intelligence agencies -- -including ours -- and they don't necessarily want that hole plugged.
"We live in a world where we cannot trust the technology that we use."

Sharyn Alfonsi: If you end up hearing from the intelligence agencies that this flaw is extremely valuable to them and to the information that they're able to get from it, what would you say to that?

Rep. Ted Lieu: That the people who knew about this flaw and saying that should be fired.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Should be fired?

Rep. Ted Lieu: Absolutely.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Why?

Rep. Ted Lieu: You cannot have 300-some million Americans-- and really, right, the global citizenry be at risk of having their phone conversations intercepted with a known flaw, simply because some intelligence agencies might get some data. That is not acceptable.

John Hering: I'd say, the average person is not going to be exposed to the type of attacks we showed you today. But our goal was to show what's possible. So people can really understand if we don't address security issues, what the state of the world will be.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Which will be what?

John Hering: We live in a world where we cannot trust the technology that we use.

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