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Cell Phone Encryption Exploit Demonstrated
Saxophonist brings us a story from Forbes about security researchers who demonstrated a new method for breaking the encryption on GSM cellular signals. The presentation was made at the recent Black Hat conference, and it's notable for the fact that the technique only requires "about half an hour with just $1,000 in computer storage and processing equipment." The researchers also claim to have found a faster method, which they intend to market for $200,000 - $500,000. Quoting:
"Undetectable, 'passive' systems like the one that Muller and Hulton have created aren't new either, though previous technologies required about a million dollars worth of hardware and used a "brute force" tactic that tried 33 million times as many passwords to decrypt a cell signal. All of that means, Hulton and Muller argue, that their cheaper technique is simply drawing needed attention to a problem that mobile carriers have long ignored--one that well-financed eavesdroppers may have been exploiting for years. 'If governments or other people with millions of dollars can listen to your conversations right now, why shouldn't your next-door neighbor?' Muller says."
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
While this is an extremely powerful re-discovery, I'm not that afraid of average Joe attempting to listen to my conversations, which are boring if anything most of the time. It would still probably take a reasonably quick computer and technical know-how to implement this kind of scheme on a usable scale. Plus, if the FBI and CIA already have the privilege to tap into my conversations, then the fear of security loss is already somewhat of a non-unique one.
http://www.shmoocon.org/
The presentation will probably be available on the Shmoocon website in the not too distant future. Forbes did the standard mainstream media muddling so check with H1kari for the real deal...
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
There are stories like this all the time, but tech people still have trouble convincing most users that end-to-end encryption is important. How is it that it caught on for the web (credit card payments over SSL), but still barely for personal communications (gpg, encrypted IM)? Even in the situations where it's easy to use encryption, many users still can't be made to care -- especially if it's not something enabled by default. Maybe just that those doing the sniffing are suitably quiet about it...
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Electronics kits for the digital generation.
'If governments or other people with millions of dollars can listen to your conversations right now, why shouldn't your next-door neighbor?'
Because the Government hates the competition?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
and i'll bet they won't charge anything.
;)
check out some movie about the GSM state of security [1] and mod me informative.
[1] http://chaosradio.ccc.de/camp2007_m4v_2015.html
knowledge of this can *only* have some impact if you tell everyone about it. just look WEP, better encryption is the way to go.
Unless their patent application is kept confidential by the government for reasons of national security, it will be published within 18 months. You'll be able to learn how the trick works from it (if you're an expert in the field and you cannot make it work, no patent should be granted). You're not allowed to exploit that commercially, of course, but at least you can have fun and pull a few pranks with it. You could claim you're psychic.
I'm wondering how you ever could tune in to the correct conversation, with thousands of mobile phones transmitting at the same time.
Bert
Scanner? We used to just use a Motorola flip phone and the scanning codes that were kindly built into it by the company. *43# etc
Whenever the phone you were scanning moved from one cell to another you'd lose the signal but it would display on the screen what channel it had changed to.. in hex.. so you'd either convert the hex to decimal, enter that channel and pick up the conversation or you'd scan for another call.
And yes, it was boring as hell.
How we know is more important than what we know.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
What a stupid comment. In other words, if some people are going to break the law, let's make sure everyone can. Good idea.
Let him sit on his couch eating Cheetos. He has the right to be happily oblivious as every personal right slowly disappears because no one is complaining (too busy eating Cheetos!) while the technology that makes it possible keeps getting cheaper and more powerful.My first thought about this was privacy and the government. Obviously.
From my understanding though, this encryption is certainly not applied over the whole transmission, meaning endpoint to endpoint. Just the handset to the tower.
The government does not actually need to crack this encryption, or even intercept transmission between handsets and towers. They can just order digital wiretaps, which cannot be detected. Speaking of which, I have always been amused when people state they you can just buy hardware to detect that too. The location of the handset is easily determined, and in most cases the identity of the user. The government already has the ability to access all of this information with the cooperation of the telecommunications companies anyways. With Telco Immunity being pushed, there won't even be room to dispute it anymore.
So not trivializing the serious issues with our privacy and the government, they are still the least of our concern here.
What strikes me as very problematic is that this opens up a whole new "market" for identity theft, banking fraud, etc. I do quite a lot of business over the phone, and just about every single company uses the touch tones to gather data. Capturing the the numbers by listening to the tones is trivial. This can be done quite easily by software and hardware.
So if all the popular company phone numbers are known, and all the data being sent to it by customers can be recorded, this presents quite a security problem. With the right amount of equipment you can start capturing all sorts of data being sent over the phone. It will only be a matter of time before you gain enough information to compromise someones identity.
I am not worried about my neighbors, not worried about my government, but I am very worried about the stranger interested in the fact I called Washington Mutual.
Newsflash - most of the world outside the US uses GSM.
How does this compare to the CCC crack? Can it do all of the encryption standards?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8955054591690672567&q=CCC+GSM&total=2&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
...but a very big problem is the fact that people, i.e. myself, are using GSM for banking. The security of phone banking 100% relies on GSM encryption. You are just identifieing yourself via PIN, and that's it - you are fully authenticated - unlimited access to the account! This is unusable now. No skimming needed...
New GSM equipment already supports A5/3 which is still secure. I think the main impact of this hack is going to be some sensational headlines and a big push to make A5/3 universally available.
message to your significant other: if he ever uses a non-gsm phone get the frying pan :)
MP3 Search Engine
Being able to crack the GSM A5/1 encryption with thousands of US dollars (instead of millions) is nice, but the encryption scheme itself was cracked long ago, and by Prof. Shamir (of RSA fame), no less.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Imagine listening in to the CEO of a Fortune500 company in the days preceding financial reports. You may gain very valuable information. As we saw last week, it is not considered insider trading if you hacked your way to the data. Also competing firms could use this to be one step ahead, and potentially can ruin another firm.
You know there are people in the world other than you right? And most of them use cell phones and don't really think about security. People like CEOs of companies that are about to go public. People like stockbrokers who place orders that change the direction of the market. People who having an affair right now and work in some shit-kicker job for a senator now but may one day be in a position of power. The list goes on. Basically, if you can't think of a better use for cell phone hacking than stealing credit card numbers or banking logins, then you're just not trying.
How we know is more important than what we know.
No, most of the developed world already has a 3G infrastructure. Only technological backwaters like the US still use GSM.
3G coverage in most of the developed world is significantly worse than GSM - your 3G phone will drop back to GSM mode in poorly covered areas. Not to mention that most of the undeveloped world uses GSM almost exclusively.
(I also hesitate to point out, for risk of starting a flame war, that a certain recent over-hyped phone only does GSM)
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Don't you mean 2.3 billion people? I mean, over 80% of the world's cell phones? The world doesn't end at your doorstop, you know?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Looks like he gave the same (or longer) presentation at Black Hat.
http://cuz.cx/
Among the phones included clearly can't be the iPhone, otherwise the title would be, "iPhone encrpytion exploit demonstrated!!"
Its a FAKE!
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.