Code breakers crack GSM cellphone encryption

[Trei, Peter]

> David Honig[SMTP:dahonig at cox.net] wrote:
> 
> At 02:37 AM 9/9/03 +1000, Greg Rose wrote:
> >At 05:18 PM 9/7/2003 -0700, David Honig wrote:
> >>"Laughing my ass off."  Since when do governments care about patents?
> >>How would this help/harm them from exploiting it?   Not that
> >>high-end LEOs haven't already had this capacity ---Biham et al
> >>are only the first *open* researchers to reveal this.
> >
> >Actually, patenting the method isn't nearly as silly as it sounds.
> Produced 
> >in quantity, a device to break GSM using this attack is not going to cost
> 
> >much more than a cellphone (without subsidies). Patenting the attack 
> >prevents the production of the "radio shack (tm) gsm scanner", so that it
> 
> >at least requires serious attackers, not idle retirees or jealous
> teenagers.
> 
Why the heck would a government agency have to break the GSM encryption
at all? The encryption is only on the airlink, and all GSM calls travel
through 
the POTS land line system in the clear, where they are subject to 
warranted wiretaps.

Breaking GSM is only of useful if you have no access to the landline
portion of the system.

Peter Trei



---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com