WO2018147749A1

WO2018147749A1 - Methods and components for identifying irregular mobile devices that should not operate on any mobile networks in a country or group of countries

Info

Publication number: WO2018147749A1
Application number: PCT/PE2017/000002
Authority: WO
Inventors: José Antonio VICUÑA MUÑOZ
Original assignee: Vicuna Munoz Jose Antonio
Priority date: 2017-02-09
Filing date: 2017-02-09
Publication date: 2018-08-16
Also published as: AR109302A1

Abstract

The present invention provides methods for identifying irregular mobile devices in a specific country or group of countries and for preventing same from operating on any of the communication networks belonging to mobile telephone operator companies that provide their services in said country or countries. These methods are not dependent on blacklists. The information obtained and subsequently analysed can improve blacklist information. The methods for identifying and locating irregular mobile devices interact with the VLR and RNT databases for this purpose. The methods proposed by the invention use standard components and thus are applicable worldwide. The methods proposed by the invention make it possible to identify subscribers who are using irregular mobile devices, thus becoming a solution that acts to dissuade the use of said devices. The methods proposed by the invention enable constant monitoring to detect irregular telephones, and make it possible to generate actions to improve Public Safety.

Description

METHODS AND ITS COMPONENTS TO IDENTIFY IRREGULAR CELLULAR EQUIPMENT THAT MUST NOT OPERATE IN ANY CELLULAR NETWORK IN A COUNTRY OR GROUP OF COUNTRIES I. TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to methods and their components for identifying cellular equipment that should not be in operation in the cellular networks of operators in a country or group of countries, since they are stolen, stolen, altered, legally acquired cell phones, that are not homologated and that are being operated by people who do not own them or that have been acquired and put into operation through any malicious action. II. OBJECT OF THE INVENTION

The object of the invention is to provide methods and their components for the identification of cellular equipment, which should not be in operation in the cellular communications networks of any operator at the country or group of countries level; for being active equipment through some malicious action (because they are stolen, cloned, altered, legally acquired cell phones that are not homologated in the country and that are being operated by people who do not own them). III. STATE OF THE TECHNIQUE

Currently, users are required to report their incidents to their operator with their cellular equipment (theft, theft, loss, change), in this way, operators keep the information updated in their Databases, perform the corresponding blockages in their networks as reported by users and transmit this information to the regulatory entity to consolidate a national registry of cell phones that should not be in use. This information is available to all operators in a given country, so that they update their blacklists and thus avoid that a telephone reported and locked in one operator can be active in another operator. This mechanism can be extended to more countries through the establishment of blacklist exchange agreements, thus a blocked telephone cannot operate in any operator within the countries of the agreement. But, not all cases are reported by affected users and the result is that blacklists would not be properly updated.

Other studies have been carried out to generate methods implemented by software to detect and block the service of informal or fraudulent cellular equipment, below are some methods that are part of the state of the art.

EP0918444 describes a methodology to identify cell phones of malicious, fraudulent or cloned origin. For this purpose, the method uses the information that regularly includes all cellular mobile phone systems, every telecommunications company operating a cellular system generates, maintains and updates databases with the information that identifies the equipment formally, legally and homologated. sold, as well as the information of the user or subscriber who has hired a service.

The method basically uses the identification request messages that the system sends with a certain frequency and whose frequency is established in each system of the operating company, so that each terminal equipment is identified and then the timer count starts to repeat the operation, said identification arrives with information of the equipment, user and location, but if said registration of identity, appears before the time period set by the timer, then you have a suspicious terminal equipment.

In US6370373, another methodology is described to locate and segregate cellular equipment of doubtful origin or fraudulent in operation. Similarly, it takes advantage of the data that is generated in a functioning cellular system and processes that information to achieve the identification of fraudulent equipment. The invention proposes a method to detect the cloned cell phones, for this the system detects the cloned cell phones by monitoring the times and position in which the Registration Notifications of the same MIN are generated. and it is reported when the time difference between such notifications is much shorter than that reasonably appropriate for such notifications with respect to the causing MSC.

In the present method, there is a processing unit called PSMS, which becomes the fraud administrator and the criterion that it handles for the segregation and identification of fraudulent or cloned ones is: time and location; for example REGNOT notifications, originated with the same MIN in different locations, with insufficient time to move between both locations.

In US20160150413, a method for the identification of cloned terminal equipment is described. For this, the method uses the time and location information of the equipment collected by the cellular system, functional as standard. This information is recorded from time to time by the system in its normal operation and allows to keep a record of the location of the equipment and its operation, in such a way, that very well you can determine the time in which a mobile was in a first location and then at another time where it is in another location, because said information is repeatedly collected by the system and at time ranges set by the cellular system; in such a way, which can be determined in how much time said mobile moved from one location to another, if said time is out of the reasonable it can proceed to its blocking, because it is considered cloned. In patent document US6377791, basically, the invention describes a method that controls the time intervals in which notifications, "call" messages or identity requests are generated, which are regularly issued temporarily over a period of time. fixed, between the cellular exchange and the terminal equipment. This message carries the identity of the terminal equipment, therefore, when said information arrives identifying the equipment in a much shorter time than the regular one, then it is considered a suspicious or cloned equipment. The IMEI code information is used, which regularly informs by means of the identity notification and that is requested regularly by the cellular system, in the case that for some reason the equipment does not send said identification, a characteristic could be added, by means of which I managed to identify the terminal and get a location report. This is how the database called EIR (equipment identification record) is built, of which there are the pools of a whole region or country, which includes the independents of each company and in turn reclassified as "white" lists, which includes to all legal and formally approved teams, the "gray" list, the suspicious teams and the "black" list, of the teams considered fraudulent or maliciously obtained. All this within a GSM cellular system.

In the invention proposed herein, the methods described do not depend on the notifications that are exchanged between the terminal equipment and the centrals of the telecommunications operating companies, as described below.

IV. DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Mobile operating companies operating in a given country are supervised by a regulatory entity in that country. Each mobile operator keeps the registry of its subscribers, those who have signed a service agreement. The regulatory body is in charge of administering a National Terminal Registry, which contains the information of all the subscribers in the country, the registered teams and acquired service modalities. This Registry is dynamic and is updated with the changes reported by each mobile operator in the country. Each mobile operator has to approve the terminals that will be sold in the country and this is informed to the respective entity to grant the respective certificates.

Thus, the National Terminal Registry (RNT) has information about the users and the teams that have reported their property.

The standards for the implementation of mobile cellular telephone networks, define and name elements that fulfill certain functions to provide information exchange between the networks and provide the service not only in the country but globally. These elements include the IMEI code, the MSISDN code, the IMSI code, the CELL ID code, VLR, HLR, Network Provisioning, among others.

IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity), which in Spanish means International Identification Code for each Cellular Equipment is a pre-recorded USSD code in GSM cellular equipment, and serves to identify the cellular equipment uniquely worldwide, similar to a number serial. This information is stored in the EIR Databases (Equipment Identity Register) that has the White List, which contains all the cellular equipment that can operate in the cellular network of the mobile telephone operator, the Black List, which contains all cellular equipment reported as irregular and that are blocked to not allow its use and the Gray List the cellular equipment under observation. IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity), which is the International Identification Code for each user of the mobile cellular network, is a unique identification code for each mobile phone user worldwide, integrated into the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card ), which allows its identification through the GSM (global system for mobile communications) and UMTS (Universal mobile telecommunications system) networks.

MSISDN (Mobile Station Integrated Services Digital Network) is the number that identifies the user of the mobile network, including the Country Code. Originally, there were series of numbers for each mobile phone operator, but at present it is no longer the case because the Number Portability is in force. Regulated cellular devices are those that have been duly registered in the mobile operators' databases and do not meet any restrictions.

Irregular cellular devices are those phones that must not operate in any communication network of any mobile operator in the country, because they have been cloned, stolen, stolen or altered, do not properly identify their owner or are involved in Some malicious or legal fact. A cloned cellular device is one whose IMEI has been copied from other cellular equipment, there may be instances of multiple copies where only one of them is the original, but it may also be the case that none of said equipment is original. An altered cellular device is one whose original IMEI has been exchanged for another valid IMEI. This alteration is performed because the original IMEI can be reported as irregular, with the alteration the equipment can function as a regular telephone as long as the new IMEI is not reported to the country's regulatory body.

CELL ID (Cell Identifier), is a code to identify geographical areas. Each active user in a cell phone operator company has that code associated depending on where it is geographically located, this because in each of these areas the service is provided by base stations. The GSM network uses this information for different actions, such as the handover (when the user is in motion and enters a geographical area served by another base station). When we refer to the CELL ID, we are referring it to the mobile phone operator.

VLR (Visitor Location Register) is a Database in the mobile telephone networks associated with the MSC (Mobile Switching Center). The VLR Database contains the information of the users located in one of the geographic service areas of an MSC. If we put together all the VLR Databases of a mobile telephone operator company we will have all the users active in the network of said operator (includes the users of the operator and the users who are roaming in the network of said operator). If we put together all the VLR Databases of all the mobile phone operator companies, we will have all the users active in the country in a certain moment of time. HLR (Home Location Register) is a Database that contains information about the subscribers of a mobile telephone operator. It contains information such as location, whether it is active in the cellular network or not, the services you can use, the cellular equipment you use, among other data. Each telephone number is registered in a single HLR and is managed by the mobile phone operating companies.

Network Provisioning or Network Provisioning, is the network element of a mobile phone operator in charge of charging the subscriber information so that they can access the different services defined according to the type of plan they have contracted. It is a means to update the databases of the mobile phone operator.

For all intents and purposes, when we talk about VLR we will also be referring to the information that can be obtained from the HLR or the Network Provisioning element, such as MSISDN, IMEI, IMSI, CELL ID, among others. RNT Database (National Registry of Terminals) of Cellular Telephony, contains information of all the subscribers who had hired a service in the country and the cellular equipment declared by each user; It is generally managed by the country's regulatory body. The IMEI and ISDN attributes are found in the VLRs and in the BD RNT. The CELL ID attribute is usually available in VLRs.

The proposed invention defines a set of elements configured and related within a method, respectively, to identify cellular equipment that should not operate in any communication network of any mobile telephone operator in a given country or group of countries subscribed to a agreement. These irregular cell identification methods do not depend on the notifications that the affected users have to make to their cellular operator.

The set includes:

- VLR Database of each mobile phone operator in the country;

- RNT Database;

- A platform for the execution of the methods;

- A data storage platform; - A system configured with methods that allow the identification and positioning of irregular cellular equipment. This system interrelates the Databases described above. The ordered set of the elements, structured and arranged in a method (hereinafter the set) for identification of irregular cellular equipment proposed by the invention consists of automatic methods of detecting irregular cellular equipment by means of the interaction of the various configured elements that make up the set. The regulatory body may direct specific actions such as notification to mobile phone operators to proceed with the blocking of said cellular equipment.

The methods, described below, will use different components of the assembly of the invention and are correlated in its implementation.

FIRST METHOD: Search and identification of cloned cellular equipment in a certain country or group of countries. It presents the following stages:

Consolidation stage: generates the consolidated VLR at the country level or group of countries. With the VLR information of each mobile phone company in the country or group of countries, the consolidated VLR database is generated at the country level or group of countries to obtain the list of all active cellular equipment at the time the information is generated . The relevant information for this method are the IMEI and MSISDN codes of each active user that are in these VLRs. Identification stage: The group of teams that have the same IMEI and different MSISDN is verified to identify the cloned computers. This process will allow us to identify these equipment in a certain country or group of countries Under normal conditions we should not find any cloned equipment.

Original search stage: uses the information from the RNT database containing the valid IMEI and MSISDN associations. By comparing all the cases found in the Identification Process, we can determine the uncloned and cloned devices.

Debug stage: it is the filtering that allows us to obtain the list of cloned equipment.

SECOND METHOD: Search and identification of irregular cellular equipment or of doubtful origin (stolen, altered, stolen, not homologated and / or legally acquired) in a certain country or group of countries.

It presents the following stages:

Consolidation stage: The consolidated VLR is generated at the country level or group of countries. With the VLR information of each mobile phone company in the country or group of countries, the consolidated VLR database is generated at the country level or group of countries to obtain the list of all active cellular equipment at the time the information is generated . The relevant information for this method are the IMEI and MSISDN codes of each active user that are in these VLRs.

Search stage of not correctly registered: For each MSISDN, which IMEI is registered in BD RNT is located; those who present a different IMEI will be part of the list of cellular equipment in operation in the mobile phone operating companies, whose IMEI does not correspond to the one registered in the BD RNT or the list of irregular or doubtful equipment. V. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

The accompanying drawings illustrate only exemplary embodiments of the invention and should not be construed as limiting its scope; The invention may admit other equally effective embodiments.

FIGURE 1. Scheme showing the interaction of the mobile operating company with the regulatory entity, and the cell of the mobile operating company and the cellular equipment.

FIGURE 2. Flowchart corresponding to the First Method referring to the search and identification of cloned cellular equipment in a given country or group of countries. FIGURE 3. Flowchart corresponding to the Second Method referred to the search and identification of irregular cellular equipment or of doubtful origin (stolen, altered, stolen, not homologated and / or legally acquired) in a certain country or group of countries. SAW. PREFERRED EMBODIMENT OF THE INVENTION

According to the figures shown, and according to the numbering adopted therein, an example of a preferred embodiment of the invention can be observed therein, which comprises the elements described in detail below.

FIGURE 1 describes the interaction 3 between the mobile telephone operator company (server and database) 1 and the regulatory entity of the area (server and database) 2; In addition, it is shown that the cellular equipment can operate in the communication network thanks to the signal emission 6 of the cell (CELL ID) 5 of its corresponding mobile operator 1. With interaction 3, the regulatory entity generates and manages the RNT Database 12, established with the information sent by the mobile telephone operator companies 1 in which the information updates of the already existing subscribers and the information of new ones are indicated. subscribers

FIRST METHOD

Search and identification of cloned cellular equipment in a certain country or group of countries.

FIGURE 2 allows us to illustrate this method and then explain it.

CONSOLIDATION STAGE 8, generates the consolidated VLR at the country level or group of countries. With the VLR information of each mobile phone company in the country or group of countries, the consolidated VLR database is generated at the country level or group of countries 9 to obtain the list of all active cellular equipment at the time the information is generated. The relevant information for this method are the IMEI and MSISDN codes of each active user that are in these VLRs.

IDENTIFICATION STAGE 10, of the cloned teams, the group of teams that have the same IMEI and different MSISDN 11. This process will allow us to identify these teams in a certain country or group of countries. Under normal conditions we should not find any cloned equipment.

ORIGINAL SEARCH STAGE 13, uses the information from BD RNT 12 that contains the valid IMEI and MSISDN associations. By comparing all the cases found in the Identification Process 10 we can determine the uncloned equipment (OK) and the cloned equipment (x) 14.

DEPURATION STAGE 15, is the filtering that allows us to obtain the list of cloned equipment 16. SECOND METHOD

Search and identification of irregular cellular equipment or of doubtful origin (stolen, altered, stolen, not homologated and / or legally acquired) in a certain country or group of countries.

FIGURE 3 allows us to illustrate this method and then explain it. CONSOLIDATION STAGE 8, generates the consolidated VLR at the country level or group of countries. With the VLR information of each mobile phone company in the country or group of countries, the consolidated VLR database is generated at the country level or group of countries 9 to obtain the list of all active cellular equipment at the time the information is generated. The relevant information for this method are the IMEI and MSISDN codes of each active user that are in these VLRs.

CORRECTLY SEARCHED SEARCH STAGE 17, for each MSISDN of 9, which IMEI is registered in 12 is located; those who present a different IMEI will be part of the list 18, cellular equipment in operation in the mobile phone operating companies, whose IMEI does not correspond to that registered in DB RNT 12 or the list of irregular or doubtful equipment. Other modifications and alternative embodiments of this invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art in view of this description. It will be recognized, therefore, that the present invention is not limited only to be used in cellular equipment, and that the definition of regulated cellular equipment and irregular cellular equipment may vary from one country to another. Consequently, this description is to be interpreted as illustrative only and it is for the purpose of teaching those skilled in the art, how to carry out the invention. It should be noted that the invention shown and described here should be taken as the presently preferred embodiment. Several changes can be made to implementations and architectures. For example, equivalent elements may be substituted for those illustrated and described herein, and certain features of the invention may be used independently of the use of other features, all as would be apparent to one skilled in the art after have the benefit of this description of the invention.

Claims

A method of searching and identifying cloned cellular equipment in a country or group of countries, characterized by the following stages:

- Consolidation: Generate the consolidated VLR database at the country or group of countries level with the relationship of all active cellular equipment and the IMEI and MSISDN codes of each active user.

- Identification: Verify the group of devices that have the same IMEI and different MSISDN identifying the cloned equipment in a specific country or group of countries.

- Search for originals: Compare the information of the BD RNT containing the valid IMEI and MSISDN associations with the cases found in the Identification stage and determine the non-cloned and cloned devices.

- Debugging: Filter the information and get the list of cloned computers.

A method of searching and identifying irregular cellular equipment: stolen, stolen, altered, illegally acquired or not approved in the country, characterized by the following stages:

- Search for not registered correctly: Locate the IMEI registered in the BD RNT for each MSISDN and obtain a list of those who present a different IMEI (irregular or doubtful equipment).

3. The methods according to claims 1 or 2, wherein said methods are executed on the basis of the set of configured elements comprising:

- VLR Database of each mobile phone operator;

- RNT Database;

- A platform for the execution of the methods;

- A data storage platform. 4. The methods according to claims 1 to 3, wherein it is concluded in an additional stage consisting in the consolidation of a list of cellular equipment that must not operate in any communication network of any mobile operator in a certain area (region or region). country), taking into consideration the geographical area of the cellular equipment.