Thread by @_MG_

Woke up to like 100 tags on this iPhone implant. Which is found in this video here:

I don’t speak Russian, but I do have a first grade language fluency in hardware. So lets take a look!
Thread 1/n

https://twitter.com/cherepanov74/status/1349641869685387264

So a lot of people have correctly identified it as this GPS & Wifi based location tracker with microphone.
A very common type of device, similar to what is found in those extremely suspicious looking USB cables: mg.lol/blog/spycable/

2/n

The headers are designed to attach a specific USB connector that fits a micro SD card in the tip.
3/n

A repurposed board is very “hobby implant” but... we see the SIM card was removed, which would make this a wifi-only implant. Yet an external GSM antenna is attached and only the ground for power? Cant see the other side though...
4/n

Upon closer inspection, they removed the SIM slot housing and soldered a SIM card directly to the pads. That gains a little more space.

Thanks @dcuthbert

5/n

https://twitter.com/dcuthbert/status/1349760738399760391

You can see an antenna in the upper right. Right on a metal shield which will hurt the range.
There is normally not a convenient place for an implant, but they swapped the battery for a smaller one.
6/n

This feels like a proof of concept done for the video, or a fairly low grade implant done with a tiny budget. It could be done way smaller by not repurposing an existing thumb drive module.

7/n

For many adversaries that want location & mic, I suspect they generally don’t need a hardware implant. But there are always exceptions. That’s not really my area though.
8/n

Looks like @Requiem_fr has a nice visual comparison showing the battery reduction for clearing space.

This is a technique I have also used in power supplies when needing a little extra space for... activities 😈

9/n

https://twitter.com/requiem_fr/status/1349678641618309122

If true, this seems almost like it was intended to be found. The work is really primitive for gov work, not to mention the other ways they can pull location & mic.

10/n

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1349669165813133314

The “shrink the power source” approach was what I used for this project:

11/n

https://twitter.com/_mg_/status/1025407386247258112

Here is a previously unpublished picture of the internals. It’s all cannibalized COTS hardware.
This was before I got into hardware design. Not very good, but enough for a proof of concept.

12/n

One plausible idea: this only needed to last long enough to see where the phone went before it was torn open. That would give some valuable info.

13/n

https://twitter.com/unic0rn_2021/status/1349801349911883776

Anyway. I’m just going off a few pictures as I haven’t had the time to properly research it. For all I know, this was created as a stand-in for video demo purposes.
14/n