Artist and engineer Julian Oliver has long held an obsession with badly-disguised radio masts, whether they are the kind that pretends to be a palm tree or the kind that pretends to be a lamp post. Now he has progressed from documenting the fakery of mobile network antennae to constructing his own elaborate GSM-based deception. Oliver took the dull beige and grey casing of a Hewlett Packard printer, and put an IMSI-catcher inside; see here. And to convince the world it really works, he shared the software for the IMSI-catcher too!
Oliver treats the piece as a work of art, calling it Stealth Cell Tower. As he recognizes, the device could not be used without breaking various laws. But he obviously has a serious point. If an artist can successfully make a fake GSM network node, which appears just like an innocuous piece of office equipment from the outside, then crooks and spies could do the same. So ask yourself a question: when a new office printer is installed, would you think to check who ordered it?
