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GPRS Can Be Hacked Easily, Claims German Researcher
hypnosec writes "A German technology researcher on Wednesday showed global mobile makers and technology firms how General Packet Radio Service can easily be tapped, intercepted, and decrypted with an average mobile phone and a few applications. According to the New York Times, Karsten Nohl, a computer engineer and mobile security researcher, demonstrated to fellow researchers gathered to attend Chaos Communication Camp, a Berlin-based hackers event, how to intercept the voice or data messages sent between mobile devices over GPRS easily, owing to weak protection provided by mobile network carriers for data information. Nohl, in collaboration with his colleague Luca Melette, tapped the information within a radius of five kilometers using a seven-year-old inexpensive mobile phone from Motorola." Computerworld also has an informative, link-laden account. If you are attending this year's CCC (only every four years, sadly), feel free to drop a line (with the submissions form) about cool projects you encounter there.
You're confusing bad Germans with good Germans. They're not the same, you know.
Exactly. If you're relying on any protocol or device you don't control, it's not secure. You want secure? Use a VPN with keyfiles where you control the devices on both ends. That's a secure connection, but if you run Skype through it, that Skype call is not secure.
I always considered phone calls, texts, and (at the very least) non-SSL cellular data traffic to be unsecure, so this news doesn't bother me.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There are craploads of M2M terminals in Australia at least which rely on GPRS or SMS to convey data. These terminals are the portable credit and bank payment terminals used in every taxi and by mobile merchants and heaps and heaps of embedded telemetry systems. The carriers here are loathe to shut down the GSM/GPRS network because of the probably millions of embedded systems that rely on the GSM/GPRS network - the cost or replacement or redesign of these terminals is insanely expensive and will only be phased out by natural attrition over the next 5-10 years.
Karsten Nohl states - “One reason operators keep giving me for switching off encryption is, operators want to be able to monitor traffic, to detect and suppress Skype, or to filter viruses, in a decentralized fashion,” Mr. Nohl said. “With encryption switched on, the operator cannot ‘look into’ the traffic anymore while in transit to the central GPRS system.”
This is rubbish. Deep Packet Inspection for the detection of layer 7 applications such as Skype being used by mobile broadband subscribers is generally done on the Gi interface, on or after the GGSN towards the ISP network. At this point in the network, there is no encryption (except for VPNs towards corporate networks for example).
DPI is not achieved by sniffing the radio interface, so Karsten Nohl's comment here is misguided and not accurate.