Satellite Phone Encryption Cracked

New submitter The Mister Purple writes "A team of German researchers appears to have cracked the GMR-1 and GMR-2 encryption algorithms used by many (though not all) satellite phones. Anyone fancy putting a cluster together for a listening party? 'Mr. Driessen told The Telegraph that the equipment and software needed to intercept and decrypt satellite phone calls from hundreds of thousands of users would cost as little as $2,000. His demonstration system takes up to half an hour to decipher a call, but a more powerful computer would allow eavesdropping in real time, he said.'"

Comments

Security through obscurity

[munozdj]

These guys have once again proven that security through obscurity is not a sensible strategy. If the codes were published in due time, the flaw could have been found with enough time to allow for preventive measures to be deployed. (I know there are a lot of inferences in the sentence, but it seems plausible to me, taking into account what has happened with other algorithms (DES, anyone?))

Is sensible encryption really that hard?

[mark-t]

Is it really so hard to use an encrypted key exchange, such as DHKE, to establish a completely private connection on something that you are broadcasting, and do not know who might be listening in?

Such key exchanges practically scream "USE ME" for situations like encrypting anything being transmitted over the air, such as cell phone usage.

Of course, it also means that the police wouldn't be able to listen in either without setting up a fake cell phone tower to be a MitM, at least not until somebody develops an other efficient algorithm to solve the discrete log problem, or unless they had a quantum computer on the job that is more powerful than any ever yet built,

Doesn't Matter

[zulux]

The original Motorola Iridium satellite phone has a NSA high-encryption pack available for it that fits in the back - this model with the DOD pack or a a more modern Iridium phone with another type of sleeve that I've never seen myself, is how secure communication is done over the Iridium network.