NSA, GHCQ Implicated In SIM Encryption Hack

First time accepted submitter BlacKSacrificE writes Australian carriers are bracing for a mass recall after it was revealed that a Dutch SIM card manufacturer Gemalto was penetrated by the GCHQ and the NSA in an alleged theft of encryption keys, allowing unfettered access to voice and text communications. The incident is suspected to have happened in 2010 and 2011 and seems to be a result of social engineering against employees, and was revealed by yet another Snowden document. Telstra, Vodafone and Optus have all stated they are waiting for further information from Gemalto before deciding a course of action. Gemalto said in a press release that they "cannot at this early stage verify the findings of the publication" and are continuing internal investigations, but considering Gemalto provides around 2 billion SIM cards to some 450 carriers across the globe (all of which use the same GSM encryption standard) the impact and fallout for Gemalto, and the affected carriers, could be huge.

Comments

The corruption is FAR worse than usually discussed

[Anonymous Coward]

The problems with corruption in the U.S. government are numerous and severe.

Matt Taibbi gives a huge amount of detail about the collapse of U.S. society as we have known it: The Divide. Quoting from the Amazon web page: "New York Times bestseller -- Named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews".

The book, House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, tells how Bush and Cheney started a war so that they could make money. One of hundreds of books and articles about the profits and violence and dishonesty: Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War. Quoting: "Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops."

#1 Best Seller: America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System.

Here is part of a transcript of a 60 Minutes show: Dissecting Obamacare:

"Brill argues that Obamacare is the product of what he calls an "orgy of lobbying" and backroom deals in which just about everyone with a stake in the $3-trillion-a-year health industry came out ahead - except the taxpayers.

"Steven Brill: Good news: More people are gonna get health care. Bad news: We have no way in the world that we're gonna be able to pay for it.

"Steven Brill says that the outrage is what the Affordable Care Act doesn't do.

"Steven Brill: It doesn't do anything on medical malpractice reform. It doesn't do anything to control drug prices. It doesn't do anything to control hospital profits.

"Lesley Stahl: So all the cost controlling side of this just went by the wayside?

"Steven Brill: 99 percent of it."

Re:even more interesting

[oodaloop]

And our Smart Cards we use on classified networks in the intelligence community use Gemalto. Just checked. Goddamnit.

I'm not even kidding. Seriously.