Is Apple Watch susceptible to the SS7 network flaw?

[musicpenguy]

I’m wondering if anyone knows how the SS7 flaw works enough to give an intelligent answer if the Apple Watch is susceptible to it as well? - https://www.theguardian.com/technol...bile-phone-vulnerability-snooping-texts-calls

My curiosity is this - my understanding is that phone calls done on the Apple Watch are purely data done over LTE and not using any of the older connections that say an iPhone would use for voice calls. Anyone know if the Apple Watch is just as vulnerable to this as traditional phones?

Not terribly worried about my own communications, just more curious than anything else! Thanks!

 

[tromboneaholic]

my understanding is that phone calls done on the Apple Watch are purely data done over LTE and not using any of the older connections that say an iPhone would use for voice calls.

I can't speak to the flaw, but I believe your description is correct.

For example, SMS/MMS is a legacy technology that uses the empty portion of the signal a handset uses to negotiate with the cell tower, so the Watch cannot directly receive SMS/MMS unless the phone forwards the messages.

SMS is one of the technologies that is vulnerable to this attack, so even if the Watch is immune to that vector, it's possible a phone the watch is paired to would be (although I do not know for sure).