They are rogue base stations that masquerade as your network operator's base stations and your phone connects to them. The operator of the stingray can then do things like collect metadata, perform protocol downgrade (modern phones display a prominent alert when that happens), etc.

On Oct 16, 2025, at 11:31, Nick Accad via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
On Thu, Oct 16, 2025 at 11:12 Alvin Starr via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
On 2025-10-16 10:22, James Knott via Talk wrote:
On 10/16/25 10:09, Alvin Starr via Talk wrote:
The various mobile networks are also subject to snooping but with a
bigger investment in fancy hardware.
  4G & 5G are encrypted with IPSec.
There are devices called "StingRay" that can hack into cell networks.
I have not spent a lot of time tracking these things other than various news articles that show up.

So I cannot guarantee that the 4/5G networks are hack-able but I am not sure that anybody can guarantee that they are not.
-- 
Alvin Starr                   ||   land:  (647)478-6285
Netvel Inc.                   ||   home:  (905)513-7688
alvin@netvel.net              ||
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voip.ma use SIP TLS for encrypted calls

https://wiki.voip.ms/article/Linphone
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