Citizen Lab: Iran Exploiting Mobile Network Vulnerabilities to Track US Military Personnel During War

The Financial Times reported that Iran exploited vulnerabilities in global telecom networks and the mobile advertising ecosystem to locate US military personnel and contractors across Iraq, Bahrain, and other Gulf states before and during the Iran war, citing research from the Mobile Surveillance Monitor and unnamed government officials 123. One method used Signaling System 7 (SS7), a decades-old roaming protocol; Gulf telecom networks reportedly blocked a wave of SS7 location requests aimed at specific devices, and regional officials suspected Iran was exploiting existing roaming agreements with local operators 3. A second method drew on commercial location data tied to smartphone advertising identifiers, and a US official told the Financial Times that Iran-linked actors used such datasets to identify hotels housing US government personnel and contractors in Iraq's Kurdistan region 3. Citizen Lab senior research fellow Gary Miller told the Financial Times that Iran "absolutely has capabilities to get real-time, immediate, and continuous location information" and said some tracking attempts trace to an Iranian mobile operator 4. TechCrunch and SC Media, both citing the Financial Times report, said the tracking enabled strikes on US bases and hotels in Iraq and Bahrain that caused several injuries, and US Central Command said in April it had received multiple threat reports of adversaries exploiting commercially available location data against deployed personnel 123. A separate unnamed US official disputed that causal link, telling the Financial Times any claim that tracking data was significant to Iran's targeting of US personnel "is a departure from the facts" 3.