Products and Solutions - Nimonic Solutions

SMS Probe

Threats to a nation's security and its containment have never been given higher importance and prominence by authorities than in the last few years with lawful interception evolving from traditional phone tapping on fixed line networks to more modern mobile communications that span voice and data. These methods are however completely reactive in nature with its effectiveness dependent on timely and reliable intelligence reports and the swiftness and decisiveness with which these identified threats are dealt with. Being reactive means these threats may have steadily grown, discretely and unbeknownst to authorities and nullifying these reactively may prove costly as intelligence gathered as to the who, what, how, when and why of the threat is not readily available, possibly incomplete even.

To aid authorities with this problem, Nimonic Solutions has developed SMS Probe, an end-to-end solution for mobile service providers to capture in a completely non-intrusive manner all short messages originating within their networks, store it for up to years, for use during subsequent investigations.

SMS Probe Functions

FEATURES

Collector The Collector captures SMS messages from within the mobile network in a non-intrusive way. Utilising port spanning configured into the VAS switch, the Collector scans network packets for SMS messages and collects the relevant message details for set in the Injector module. The supported SMS protocols are SMRSE and SMPP.

Injector SMS messages that have been collected are processed by the Injector in twp distinct steps:

1. Apply user-defined filters to exclude messages that are deemed unnecessary such as missed called notifications, content provider messages, terminal manager settings, 8-bit application messages, welcome messages and others.
2. Stores relevant messages into the Repository

Filters can be defined on the following attributes:

1. Originating number - for example, numbers with NULL values which may indicates messages generated from services such as welcome messages or numbers with specific values, e.g., "181" which are associated to services like voice mail messages.or messages generated by content providers
2. Destination number - similar in function as filters for originating number but based on the destination number specified in the short message

Note that 8-bit messages are automatically ignored and excluded from injection into the Repository.

Storage into the Repository makes use of optimised loading tools that supports concurrent loading, keeping the time required for data load to a minimum.

Repository SMS messages are stored on a Sybase IQ database, a RDBMS that has been optimised for very large databases such as data warehouses. Its unique indexing scheme enables searches across large data volumes to be done in a fast and efficient way, keeping response times to a minimum.

Search Engine With a Windows GUI client, staff can search for suspicious messages using any combination of the following:

1. Originating number - the MSISDN that sent the SMS
2. Destination number - the MSISDN that received the SMS
3. Delivery Date(s) - the date of range of dates that the SMS have been sent or received
4. Message Content - a word or phrase within the messages

In addition, searches are limited by the following:

1. Message Type - limits the search to only mobile originating or mobile terminating messages
2. Encoding Scheme - specifies whether 7-bit (English) or 16-bit messages are to be retrieved during the search

Both English and Arabic languages are support by the Search Engine.
The Search Engine also include an export function, allowing specific messages selected or all messages retrieved to be exported in a text document that can be opened by applications such as WordPad.
Archival Housekeeping functions are provided by the Archival module, allowing expired messages to be offloaded to an external medium and/or purged from the Repository
Access Control / VPN Access control handles the security aspect of the system by managing access to the SMS Probe䠠 on two levels: application controlled user-id and password and secured link to the application via VPN connection.

TECHNICAL FEATURES

Integration with SMSCs with support for SMRSE, SMPP and CIMD2 protocols
Built on Microsoft .Net platform
RDBMS Supported: Sybase IQ
Server Platform Supported: Sun on Solaris, Linux and Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition
Client Platform Supported: Windows XP

address:

Nimonic Solutions
Deira, Dubai
United Arab Emirates, PO Box 13334

phone:

+971 50 535 4947

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