Osmocom SIMtrace 2¶

• Table of contents
• Osmocom SIMtrace 2
  • Hardware
    • SIMtrace board for SIMtrace 2 project
      • SIMtrace2 hardware availability
    • ngff-cardem
      • ngff-cardem availability
    • sysmoQMOD
      • sysmoQMOD hardware availability
  • Firmware
    • trace
    • card emulation
    • Development
  • Flashing
  • Host PC Software
    • Installing binary packages
    • Building from source
      • Preconditions
      • Compiling it
    • Accessing it
    • Applications
      • simtrace2-list
      • simtrace2-sniff
  • Binary Packages
• Commercial Support

Osmocom SIMtrace 2 is a software, firmware and hardware system for passively tracing SIM-ME communication between the SIM card and the mobile phone, and remote SIM operation.
While it was designed for SIM-ME communication, it supports all ISO 7816 smart-cards using the T=0 protocol (the most common case).

It is a followup of the SIMtrace project, providing more functionalities (e.g. remote SIM operation) and supporting multiple boards (e.g. SIMtrace with SAM3S, sysmoQMOD).

Hardware¶

The SIMtrace 2 firmware supports several boards.
The firmware is written for an ATSAM3S4B micro-controller.

Note: The SAM3S is meanwhile labelled as not recommended for new designs by Atmel. However, there are plenty of hardware and software compatible upgrade options, including SAM4S. The upgrade is possible in the future.

SIMtrace board for SIMtrace 2 project¶

The main purpose of this board is to sniff the communication between a phone and a SIM card (or any card reader and smart-card).

This is the same circuit board as the previous SIMtrace v1, with the exception that the ATSAM3S4B micro-controller replaces the old AT91SAM7S64. Since the SAM3S is pin compatible with the SAM7S, any SIMtrace v1 board can be converted into a SIMtrace v2 board simply by replacing the micro-controller.

Note: This hardware is open source hardware

SIMtrace2 hardware availability¶

Fully assembled SIMtrace2 boards and related accessories like FPC cables can be obtained from the sysmocom webshop

ngff-cardem¶

This is a carrier board for cellular modems in ngff / M.2 form-factor with on-board simtrace2. It is wired in a way that it can operate both as passive tracer/sniffer, or in cardem mode.

See ngff-cardem for all information on the ngff-cardem board, including design files.

Note: This hardware is open source hardeware

ngff-cardem availability¶

Fully assembled ngff-cardem boards can be obtained from the sysmocom webshop

sysmoQMOD¶

The SAM3S micro-controller with SIMtrace 2 firmware is also used on the sysmoQMOD board to provide remote SIM operation capabilities.

Note: This hardware is not open source.

sysmoQMOD hardware availability¶

Fully assembled sysmoQMOD boards and related products can be obtained from sysmocom

An Evaluation kit is available from the sysmocom webshop - please contact sales@sysmocom.de for inquiries on quantity pricing.

Firmware¶

The SIMtrace 2 firmware source code is available in git
Pre-built firmware binaries are available here.
The firmware are currently under active development and we recommend to flash the new firmware images to profit from the latest bug fixes and added functionalities.

The SIMtrace 2 firmware is a complete rewrite and can only be flashed on hardware with SAM3S ARM Cortex-M3-based micro-controllers.
The SIMtrace 2 firmware is not compatible with the older SIMtrace v1 using SAM7S ARM7TDMI-based micro-controllers.

To get the version of the firmware flashed on the device, you can use the simtrace2-list tool

trace¶

The trace application firmware allow to sniff the communication between a phone and a SIM card (or any card reader and smart-card).
It is intended for the SIMtrace v2 hardware and its function is analog to the SIMtrace v1.

The sniffing is completely passive. It uses the RST, ATR, PPS (baud rate tested with F/D up to 512/32), and WT (waiting timeout) to properly parse the ISO 7816-3 TPDUs.
Currently only the T=0 protocol is supported since this is the most common protocol used (we haven't seen T=1 in use).

The application firmware to be flashed using DFU is simtrace-trace-dfu.bin.

card emulation¶

The card emulation application firmware allows to emulate a card (e.g SIM). This is useful if you don't want to change the card in the device (e.g. phone), or have the card in a remote location.

This firmware comes preflashed on the sysmoQMOD board.
It also exists from the SIMtrace v2 board, but is currently in beta. If you still would like to try it, read this article.

Development¶

To compile the firmware using the source code, or participate in the development, please refer to the instructions provided in the README

Flashing¶

The firmware images can be flashed as described here.

Host PC Software¶

The source code of the SIMtrace 2 host PC software are available in the simtrace2 git

Binary packages are made available for a variety of Linux distributions, see Binary_Packages for more details. In case of doubt, use the nightly builds.

Installing binary packages¶

We assume that you've added the binary package feed, for example as described at Nightly_Builds.

All you need to do is to do

$ sudo apt-get install simtrace2-utils

Building from source¶

this assumes you are a software developer familiar with building software from source using GNU autotools. If you're not, please use the binary packages (see above).

Preconditions¶

libosmocore, libpcsclite and libusb.

to install those packages:

sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev libosmocore-dev libpcsclite-dev

Compiling it¶

git clone https://gitea.osmocom.org/sim-card/simtrace2.git
cd simtrace2/host/
autoreconf -fi
./configure
make

Accessing it¶

Add udev rules so to be able to use SIMtrace 2 devices and access the device as non-root user:

# add current user to plugdev group (user needs to re-login for this change to take effect)
sudo adduser $USERNAME plugdev
# grant access permission to SIMtrace 2 for plugdev group
sudo wget -O /etc/udev/rules.d/99-simtrace2.rules https://gitea.osmocom.org/sim-card/simtrace2/raw/branch/master/host/contrib/99-simtrace2.rules
# reload udev rules
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger

Applications¶

simtrace2-list¶

simtrace2-list allows to list all SIMtrace 2 compatible devices:

./simtrace2-list
USB matches: 1
    1d50:60e3 Addr=4, Path=2-2.3, Cfg=1, Intf=0, Alt=0: 255/1/0 (SIMtrace Sniffer)

This is useful when you have multiple devices (such as with the Wiki) and have to specific with device to use by the other applications.

simtrace2-sniff¶

This will use the trace firmware and retrieve the sniffed phone-SIM communication.
The activity will be shown on the consol output:

./simtrace2-sniff 
simtrace2-sniff - Phone-SIM card communication sniffer 
(C) 2010-2017 by Harald Welte <laforge@gnumonks.org>
(C) 2018 by Kevin Redon <kredon@sysmocom.de>

Using USB device 1d50:60e3 Addr=4, Path=2-2.3, Cfg=1, Intf=0, Alt=0: 255/1/0 (SIMtrace Sniffer)
Entering main loop
Card state change: reset hold
Card state change: reset release
ATR: 3b 9f 96 80 1f c7 80 31 a0 73 be 21 13 67 43 20 07 18 00 00 01 a5 
PPS: ff 10 96 79 
PPS: ff 10 96 79 
Fi/Di switched to 512/32
TPDU: a0 a4 00 00 02 3f 00 9f 22 
TPDU: a0 a4 00 00 02 7f 20 9f 22 
TPDU: a0 a4 00 00 02 6f 46 9f 0f 
TPDU: a0 b0 00 00 11 81 43 43 43 20 45 76 65 6e 74 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 90 00 
Card state change: reset hold

The TPDU will also be sent the GSMTAP frames to UDP/IPv4 localhost:4729.
This also allows to analyze the communication in wireshark using the GSM SIM dissector.

Binary Packages¶

Osmocom provides binary packages for several flavors of Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux on a variety of architectures (i586, x86_64, armhf, armv7l). Unless you are a software developer interested in developing on Osmocom, it is recommended you use those packages instead of building from source.

For more details see Binary_Packages

Commercial Support¶

Commercial support as well as development, system integration and training services for this project are available from sysmocom