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xgoldmon

xgoldmon is a small tool to convert the messages output by the USB logging mode of phones with Intel/Infineon XGold baseband processor back to the GSM/UMTS radio messages sent over the air so you can watch them in e.g. Wireshark in realtime. This includes signalling for calls, SMS, USSD, paging for your and other phones and so on.

Currently, these devices are supported:

Patches for other devices or to decode more messages are very much welcome!

-Tobias Engel

Mail: tobias@sternraute.de Twitter: @2b_as

Update for Modmobmap

This update is a small adaptation to be run with Modmobmap that was presented at BeeRump 2018. In this update was added small parser of log print taken from the XGold DIAG interface, that only displays cell logs information for 3G cells as follows:

  ./xgoldmon -t s3 -m /dev/ttyACM1

The logs could then be read on the FIFO file created for that:

  $ cat ./celllog.fifo
  [...]
  [CellInfo]:PLMN=208-15;RAC=0x1;LAC=0x4e71;CID=0x1f****;DL_UARFCN=10737;UL_ARFCN=9787
  [CellInfo]:PLMN=208-20;RAC=0x1;LAC=0x4e71;CID=0x1f****;DL_UARFCN=2950;UL_ARFCN=2725
  [...]
  [CellInfo]:PLMN=208-20;RAC=0x1;LAC=0xb5aa;CID=0x97****;DL_UARFCN=10639;UL_ARFCN=9689
  [CellInfo]:PLMN=208-10;RAC=0x1;LAC=0xb5aa;CID=0x97****;DL_UARFCN=65535;UL_ARFCN=2850
  [...]

Note that secret code for ServiceMode 0011 should be typed before. 

To use it out-of-the-box (without Modmobmap), you could also connect to the AT interface as follows and change network operators as well as other things:

  screen /dev/ttyACM0 115200
  AT+COPS=1,2,"<operators>"
  [...]

How to build

xgoldmon has been tested on Linux and OSX.

As a prerequisite, a recent version of libosmocore has to be installed. See here for instructions: http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/libosmocore (If you install it in a non-standard location please set PKG_CONFIG_PATH accordingly.)

Then run "make" in the xgoldmon directory. An xgoldmon binary should be created.

Before running xgoldmon

To enable the logging mode ("diag mode") on the S2, S3 and Note2:

The Galaxy Nexus has to be rooted first to activate diag mode! Then:

When connecting the phone via USB to the computer, several new pseudo-tty devices should be created. The one with the second lowest number should be the logging port. So for example on Linux, if you have no other ttyACM* devices, it should be /dev/ttyACM1.

xgoldmon tries to set proper serial attributes on the device if the "-s" option is specified. If that fails, you might have to do that yourself with something like:

  stty 115200 pass8 raw -noflsh -F /dev/ttyACM1

Running xgoldmon

E.g.:

  xgoldmon -t s3 -l /dev/ttyACM1

Full usage:

usage: ./xgoldmon [-t <phone type>] [-l] [-s] [-i <ip address>] [-v] <logfile or device>
  -t: select 's4', 's3', 'gnex', 's2' or 'note2' (default: 's3')
  -l: print baseband log messages
  -m: print Cell logs (could be used with Modmobmap)
  -s: set proper serial device attributes
  -i: send gsmtap packets to given ip address (default: 'localhost')
  -v: show debugging messages (more than once for more messages)

In some situations, the phone might close the device, causing xgoldmon to exit. If you want to do some unsupervised logging, it might be a good idea to put the call to xgoldmon in a loop.

Watching the radio messages in Wireshark

xgoldmon uses libosmocore to send the radio messages in GSMTAP format (http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/GSMTAP) to UDP port 4729 on the local host. In order to monitor the packages with Wireshark, something has to listen on that port, e.g.

  $ nc -u -l 4729

Then, in Wireshark, start a capture on the loopback interface. To see only the GSMTAP messages, set this filter:

  udp.port==4729

GSM messages will be decoded out-of-the box in Wireshark. For UMTS/RRC messages, you need a recent development version of Wireshark (at least revision 47792), which you most likely will have to build yourself.

If everything works, it should look a bit like the "screenshot-mtsms-while-in-a-call.png". It contains a screenshot of Wireshark that shows an S3 receiving a text message while in a call. (Lots of messages filtered out to show the more relevant messages)

Thanks

Many thanks to...