this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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I'm confused. How would this not defeat a stingray? They would know your phone is there. But they wouldn't see who you're talking to, they wouldn't hear your phone call, they wouldn't see your encrypted messages. They wouldn't see the traffic on your phone. What's left?
Your IMEI, your carrier IP, your packet timing, any DNS your phone leaks, the IP of your VPN endpoint, your transmitter chipset, your likely OS kernel, any unreleased zero-days known to them (and maybe an exploit for them), and also a way to ack TCP packets it never intends to forward in order to sever your connection while letting your device keep taking for as long as possible, which might buy them a little extra time before you realize they’ve captured your session and cut you off.
Everything you said is true, but that is a reduced surface area versus the scenario where you're sending your traffic naked over the wire. Including your voice traffic. Using a VPN while attached to a stingray is strictly a smaller risk surface.