RSA keys cracked, again

January 11, 2010

Last week an international team of researchers broke the 768bit RSA key using several hundred computers, The Register reports.
It’s interesting news but has little practical value, however, the part of the article everyone should read is:
More importantly, it means it’s only a matter of another decade or so – sooner assuming there’s some sort of [...]

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GSM cracking news roundup

January 4, 2010

Over the last week most of the media across the world covered the cracking of A5/1, the algorithm responsible for the privacy of GSM voice calls. The announcement happened at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin on the 27th of December.
Have collected the best coverage, links below:
New York Times “Cellphone Encryption Code Is Divulged”
Financial Times [...]

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GSM Cracking, few inaccuracies and omissions

December 29, 2009

The New York Times broke the story of the A5/1 cracking (A5/1 being the encryption algorithm that protects the privacy of your GSM calls) last night, prompting a media frenzy.
The story goes like this: since 1994 researchers have warned that A5/1, developed in the late ’80s, was inadequate and could be cracked easily. The GSM [...]

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Intercepting drones and GSM calls in Iraq and Afghanistan

December 22, 2009

Everything you transmit will be used against you
Last week news broke out that late last year a laptop seized from an Iraqi insurgent contained video intercepted from US drones. Then in July, the Wall Street Journal reported that more laptops with feeds were discovered confirming that militants were tapping into the live video feed from [...]

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Phone Tapping scandal in Turkey

December 10, 2009

Interesting article from The Economist about Turkey’s latest phone tapping scandal.
The Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, complains that he has been the target of eavesdropping for the last six years.
But beyond the PM’s statements there is a murkier picture. Apparently the Ministry of Justice (led by Mr. Erdogan’s AK Party) has been listening to plotters [...]

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Corporate voice security survey

December 3, 2009

Over the past few months we have worked with ABI Research on a survey on cell phone interception and the steps organizations take to protect their data.
There is a vast quantity of data loss incidents due to legislation (in case of unauthorized access to an unencrypted database you have to report the loss). However the [...]

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Chinese cyber-warfare report to Congress

November 24, 2009

Few days ago I blogged about the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (see “Chinese cyber-espionage“). Now the commission has just released its 2009 report to the Congress and, as the last one did, it makes an interesting read (it encompasses all kinds of hostile activities, not just cyber warfare). The most striking feature being [...]

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T-mobile customer data stolen

November 18, 2009

Yesterday the UK Information Commissioner (sort of privacy watchdog) announced that it was collaborating with a mobile operator over data theft by its employees. Did not name any names, but I knew it was T-mobile.
How did I know? Well because it was my data that was sold.
Had a T-mobile contract (directly with them, no stores [...]

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Cellcrypt Mobile for BlackBerry 5.0 released

November 16, 2009

Some great news for those interested in voice security lately, the latest version of Cellcrypt Mobile for BlackBerry has been released at the Developer Conference last week. The PR response was just overwhelming, nothing we have done so far generated that much buzz as that announcement.
But there were a couple of bits that were firsts [...]

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Blocking federal wiretaps

November 12, 2009

Interesting news from the University of Pennsylvania. A team of researchers there delved in the inner workings of federal wiretapping equipment and found that they are vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks.
The most chilling quote is:
The flaws they’ve found “represent a serious threat to the accuracy and completeness of wiretap records used for both criminal investigation and [...]

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