Tehran, Dec 25, Taliya News – Head of TCI Board of Directors said here Friday that only 6,600 of the First Operator’s SIM cards are suspected of being copied (1 in each 1,000).
Vafa Ghaffarian emphasized in an interview with IRNA IT reporter, “That is the number of the suspected copied SIM cards, as I said, not necessarily their definite number.”
Those lines are currently under supervision and based on the connections they would have it would be easy to judge whether they are copied, or not.
The Deputy ICT Minister said, “After these surveys if it is proved that a SIM card is not copied its file would be taken out of the suspicious SIM cards file, and otherwise it would be forwarded to the related judiciary centers.”
A Chinese SIM card copier has come to Iranian market for a couple of months that is capable of copying the first series of the TCI SIM cards, enabling a number of subscribers to use the same mobile phone line.
In response to a question on what type of SIM cards, and what percentage of the SIM cards in Iran can be copied, Ghaffarian said, “There are three types of SIM cards in Iran today. The weakest ones are the oldest SIM cards that can be copied, that comprise 3% of the SIM cards in Iran.”
He added, “Security of those SIM cards is very vulnerable, which is the reason why they are easily copied.”
The top TCI official pointing out that the MCCI’s 2nd and 3rd types of SIM cards are more secure, stressed, “The 2nd type as a counter whose owner has to refer to TCI once it is filled, and cannot be so easily copied.”
According to Ghaffarian, the 3rd type SIM cards have an extension after their codes that cannot be hacked, and are therefore fully secure.
He meanwhile reiterated, “Taliya and IranCell SIM cards are of the 3rd type, copying which is impossible.”