GSM Encryption cracked..

[Furryappleseed]

Article here.

Don't really know how major this is but I do know I use Verizon...

[Trooper110]

Depends how concerned you are about your calls being secure :P Personally if people want to listen to a conversation between me and my mom about what she's cooking when she invites me over they're welcome

I don't have any reason to be concerned about people listening to any conversation I have. However I can see reasons for government/military/various corporations to fear potentially having any conversation open to someone with the right tools.

[{CLR}geneSW]

OPSEC and INFOSEC come into play when talking over a cellphone about military operations. Leak nothing that isn't already public knowledge. Whern't anything to worry about to being with when ya think like this. lol.

[mapes]

OPSEC and INFOSEC come into play when talking over a cellphone about military operations. Leak nothing that isn't already public knowledge. Whern't anything to worry about to being with when ya think like this. lol.

Hmm my thoughts. As some of the posters mentioned I think this was cracked in 2006. I can't really remember though because I might be thinking of a diff algorithm. Any ways your right trying to pick one voice call out of a stream of thousands has to be hard. In fact it's prolly much easier to bribe or blackmail a telcom employee to get a tap and trace on whatever number you want or hack the telcom switch

[ViTO]

Not to fear....


I know anytime I need to speak about my illegal activities, I always buy one of those disposable cell phones using cash, of course


O'COME ON....... JUST KIDDING !!

[homosapien15]

I think it's a good thing. Afterall, the same thing is what makes RSA encryption stronger...pure RSA is "solvable" now it has variations to increase security.

If you're going to discuss sensitive things may as well use skype! Encryption keys, last I heard, for calls aren't given to the government.

[mapes]

I think it's a good thing. Afterall, the same thing is what makes RSA encryption stronger...pure RSA is "solvable" now it has variations to increase security.

If you're going to discuss sensitive things may as well use skype! Encryption keys, last I heard, for calls aren't given to the government.

The weakest link in any system is the user. I don't think skype is necessarily more secure. Just bug the end users system. Which in some case is as trivial as dropping a usb stick in a parking lot or sending someone an infected or trojaned attachment. As compared to trying to locate one GSM call out of hundreds or thousands in the case of Manhattan. Much easier to bribe a phone employee.

BTW Skype uses RSA keys. I'm not sure I understand your statement RSA is solvable. RSA can broadly refer to public keys as in SSH or to a specific implementation as put out by the RSA corporation. In both cases there are many many variants of RSA implementations using differing key lengths and even hashing algorithms. Also when you say solvable that too is a broad generalized term. Triple DES was brute forced through a world wide effort taking almost a year (I think). The phrase is computational unfeasible meaning it would take so much CPU time that it's unfeasible to brute force. Hence increasing the key size increases the CPU time. However key management is the other side of that sword maintaining, distrubitng and revoking keys becomes difficult. Also larger keys in asymmetrical encryption require more CPU power to setup the connection. So in the case of a cell carrier where hundreds or thousands of calls are being setup an increased key size can have an adverse performance effect.

[Sirex]

Not to fear....


I know anytime I need to speak about my illegal activities, I always buy one of those disposable cell phones using cash, of course


O'COME ON....... JUST KIDDING !!

Vito your worse than that mole we 'delt with' last week!!!
If you keep giving out how we work, i'm going to have to stop doing business with you!!!


I got other people who can 'move' my jars of Scot's air!

[mapes]

Heres an execllent comic demonstrating my point