GSM Code Cracked…Heavy Breathing On The Line

There is this damn breathing noise I hear on the line everytime I make a phone call from my cell.

What’s that? It was Paget and Nohl?

…oh!

From The Register:

At a hacker conference in Berlin that runs through Wednesday, the cryptographers said they’ve cracked the algorithm that determines the random channel hopping and have devised a practical means to capture entire calls using equipment that costs about $4,000. At the heart of the crack is open-source software for computer-controlled radios that makes the frequency changes at precisely the same time, and in the same order, that the cellphone and base station do.

“We now know this is possible,” said Karsten Nohl, a 28-year-old cryptographer and one of the members of an open-source project out to prove that GSM, the technical standard used by about 80 percent of the mobile market, can’t be counted on to keep calls private. The attack “is practical, and there are real vulnerabilities that people are exploiting.”

Ouch!

Yet another reason on the long list of “Why the hell am I not in Berlin?”.

For the full article read on.

Article Link

Also, here’s where you can find a copy of the presentation at 26c3. And yes, the video of the preso is available on torrent sites. 1 2 and 3

Posted by Dave Lewis on December 28, 2009. Filed under Mobile,Telecom,Vulnerability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.