Silicon.fr reporting GSM crypto broken

[[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Owen Blacker)]

http://www.silicon.fr/getarticle.asp?ID=2247 (in French; reg prolly
rqd)

Partial (and hurried) translation follows:

<translate>
| Mobiles: researchers break the GSM code
| The vulnerability allows interception and listing to calls
| 
| We talk a lot about vulnerabilities and viruses that attack our
| systems.  But we talk much less about mobile phones which themselves
| contain embedded software and are, thus, vulnerable to attacks. 
| Israeli researchers have recently demonstrated that this
| vulnerability is also important.  
| 
| A group of researchers have, in effect, broken the encryption code
| that protects GSM mobile phone conversations, according to the Hebrew
| daily [sic] Ha'aretz [http://www.haaretz.com/, though I can't find
| anything there].  
| 
| [...]
| 
| Eli Biham, professor at the Technion[?] Institute in Haifa, says that
| he was dumbfounded when one of his doctorate students, Elad Barkan,
| announced that he'd found a fundamental error in the encryption
| protocol used by GSM.  "I told him it was impossible", Biham told
| Reuters, "an error that common must already have been fixed by
| someone.  However, he was right, the flaw really was there." [I'm
| retranslating his words, so they won't be verbatim]  
| 
| [...] "We can listen to the conversation."
| 
| According to him, the editors of the GSM software made the error of
| prioritising sound quality -- that's to say the error correction and
| handling interference -- over encryption.  
| 
| In any case, we don't need to panic.  According to the GSM
| Association, the vulnerability discovered in Haifa could not be
| exploited without expensive and complex technologies and would only
| allow precise user-identification after long research.  
| 
| Furthermore, such an attack could only succeed if the pirate sent out
| signals in a manner to pass off his equipment as the GSM relay by
| which the communications should travel.  The attacker would, equally,
| have to locate himself physically between the relay and the victim in
| order to intercept the call.  
| 
| The scientists have sent a copy of their work to the GSM Association,
| to help them correct the problem.  Equally, they have kept the
| details of their discovery very brief, so that any use will be kept
| for white hats, they confirmed. 
</translate>

The story's credited to "Max Verbatim" (no, really).  The translation's
mine.  Further distribution is fine, so long as my credit remains  ;o)

-- 
Owen Blacker
Senior Software Developer and InfoSecurity Consultant   Wheel: Group
See http://www.owens-place.org.uk/pgp.html -- more about my PGP keys
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-- 
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