"S8 Data Line Locator" covert cell phone device teardown - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: `
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: June 20, 2017, 02:14:47 am
content: I found this device in the depths of Shenzhen and thought it might be interesting to see what inside. Pretextually it's a micro USB cable that you'd leave plugged into a phone charger, actually it's a hidden cell phone device for covertly spying on people.The box it comes in is pretty discrete, note that it's designed specifically designed to be opened and invisibly resealed by sliding the plastic packaging upwards. This is because the device needs some configuration before it can be used, namely it needs a SIM card installed to have its intended nefarious purpose.The cable looks the part, it has a largish end on it but that's not completely comically sized, you'd only notice it's about double the size of a normal one if you were paying attention properly. As far as I can tell data and power pass straight through it.The insides are what you'd expect, the board is pretty recent (2017-02-18) and is mostly taken up by a MEDIATEK MT6261MA SoC and aRDA6625GSM radio chip. The hardware is the sort of thing you'd find in a cheap "smart watch" or device like that, the existence of a VBAT test point when there's no battery on the device suggests it's probably been modified from something else, or potentially some of the spare pads on the SIM side could accommodate a lithium cell. There's what appear to be UART lines going to the SoC but I couldn't see anything coming out of it on my device, and it didn't respond to some tentatively sent commands. The antenna is deposited on the inside of the curved plastic end of the USB connector and soldered back onto the main board.The manual is, predictably for this sort of product, completely unreadable. There's some modes for doing basic geolocation using cellphone towers (I don't know how useful this is), or selectively having it make outgoing calls when it hears noise above a certain volume. Generally the mode of operation of the device is that it will answer any incoming call silently and allow the person who called it to listen in.I'm slightly amazed this sort of thing exists and is being produced on any sort of scale (I paid almost nothing for this device), something to be on the lookout for if you work in any sort of operational security sensitive industry. This is something I'd have never thought of existing until I came across it.

author: estest
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 10, 2017, 11:06:02 am
content: Have you ever managed to run this device? It doesn't work for me, may be it needs some specific sim?

author: swim187
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 30, 2020, 10:10:19 pm
content: this is what you need a proper teardown!!!https://www.mediafire.com/file/avkev1089ovt0hc/S8_DATA_LINE_LOCATOR_MANUAL_-_PROPER_TEARDOWN_41_PAGES.7z/filehttps://www.mediafire.com/file/ihu85q85xselrcc/S8_DATA_LINE_LOCATOR_MANUAL_-_PROPER_TEARDOWN_41_PAGES.pdf/file<iframe width="1280" height="720" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hVOyoIfHA4E" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>