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GSM Monitoring & A5/1 Cracking
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Researchers at a BlackHat security conference in Washington, D.C. this week detailed a method for dramatically reducing the cost and time needed to crack the security that prevents eavesdropping of GSM-based mobile phones.
Hulton & Steve have presented the new fast & cheap method of cracking A5/1 GSM encryption this week at BlackHat DC Security Conference 2008. This is the result of Cracking A5 and GSM scanner project which has been presented at VNSECON 07 by Steve last year.
FYI, GSM monitoring system has always been there for a long time. However, those devices are very expensive (few hundred thousands to millions USD depends on capabilities, number of channels, antenna,...) and only available to government agents.
Links:
- http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/02/research_may_spell_end_of_mobi.html
- http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-dc-08/bh-dc-08-speakers.html#Hulton
- http://wiki.thc.org/gsm
- http://wiki.thc.org/cracking_a5
- http://conf.vnsecurity.net/program
