AreaCellPhone

A German engineer and encryption expert, Karsten Nohl announced at the Chaos Communication Congress that he had cracked the GSM encryption algorithm. He published the code employed to protect world’s GSM phone calls from unauthorized snooping.

Karsten Nohl said that he had compiled two terabytes worth of cracking tables to work out which encryption key was used to secure a GSM telephone conversation or text message. If the algorithms are cracked, then outsiders could theoretically listen in on any phone conversation of their choosing, which would lead to extreme lapses in security and privacy. Nohl says: “This shows that existing G.S.M. security is inadequate. We are trying to push operators to adopt better security measures for mobile phone calls.”

While Nohl quit short of releasing a GSM-cracking device that would be illegal in many countries, including the U.S. He said he divulged information that has been common knowledge in academic circles and made it “practically useable.”

GSM is the most widely used mobile standard, accounting for about 3.5 billion of the world’s 4.3 billion wireless connections.

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Tags: algorithm, cracked, german hacker, gsm encription, gsm hacked, phone snooping