Secure phones from VectroTel?

[Alex Pankratov]

Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> Following the links from a /. story about a secure(?) mobile phone
> VectroTel in Switzerland is selling, I came across the fact that this
> firm sells a full line of encrypted phones.
> 
> http://www.vectrotel.ch/
> 
> The devices apparently use D-H key exchange to produce a 128 bit AES
> key which is then used as a stream cipher (presumably in OFB or a
> similar mode). Authentication appears to be via a 4 digit pin,
> certainly not the best of mechanisms.

According to -

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2006/05/22/vectrotel-provides-secure-mobile-communications/

 >   Additional security and integrity is ensured by a calculated
 >   HASH checksum that is indicated on the display.
 >
 >   To protect you from misuse by a third party we secured the
 >   crypto functions by a user-determined PIN code

PINs are not used for phone-to-phone authentication, only user-to-phone.
Though the article is full of obvious mistakes, so they might've gotten
this part wrong too.

Alex



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