Sometimes its ridiculous how the most common (and important) technology in our daily-life is vulnerable to kinds of attacks that could bring nightmares. Still, no one is aware, no one is doing anything. Such is the Case of Today’s GSM — The most popular Cellphone Technology.

Every year, some hacker comes out and breaks something crucial to us, which makes us and authorities learn it the HARD WAY, “We are not safe”.

The best work is done by BlackHat and DEFCON, which are open forums for Hackers, especially DEFCON, which has open hacking challenges.

If you ever went to the DEFCONs, you know what I’m talking about. These guys can take down a military of servers down in couple of hours. They can hack anything from a conventional “lock” to GSM phones.

This year was no exception. Karsten Nohl, a PhD candidate from the University of Virginia gave quite a talk. He wants to generate a rainbow table that will decipher GSM (AT&T and Tmobile) phone calls. A rainbow table is basically a look-up table that could speed up password cracking for almost anything by factor of 10x or even more.

To generate the table, we choose a random set of initial passwords from P, compute chains of some fixed length k for each one, and store only the first and last password in each chain. The first password is called the starting point and the last one is called the endpoint. In the example chain above, “aaaaaa” would be the starting point and “kiebgt” would be the endpoint, and none of the other passwords (or the hash values) would be stored.

These hashes are then used in recovering the plaintext password from a password hash generated by a hash function, often a cryptographic hash function.

Whether To DO or NOT to?

Nohl might have declared this publicly, but it has raised a concern among the authorities. Should such attacks be publicized?

If this is allowed, the cellular systems will be fully hacked within 6 months. Analysts appear to be concerned. They are saying methodology required to crack GSM encryption has been available for 15 years.

Stan Schatt, Vice President and Practice Director, Healthcare and Security at ABI Research pointed out:

“Potentially this news could have as profound an impact on the cell phone industry as the breaking of WEP encryption had on the wireless LAN industry.”

The Dark Secret of GSM

The cryptographic protection is but a small part of the 130 volumes and over 6,000 pages which make up the GSM standard. Unfortunately, the cryptography was designed in secret and is still kept secret, provided to individuals at smartcard and cellphone manufacturers on a “need-to-know”‘ basis.

“As shown so many times in the past, a design process conducted in secret and without public review will invariably lead to an insecure system,” says Marc Briceno, Director of the SDA. “Here we have yet another example of how security by obscurity is no security at all.”

The origin of the breach was when the SDA (smartcard developer association), while designing a smartcard, discovered the cryptographic algorithms used inside the SIM’s and cellphones. The SDA first verified that the algorithms were accurate. The exact details of the algorithms were not known to the public but the verified algorithms matched the facts that were publicly known. Next the SDA brought in David Wagner and Ian Goldberg, researchers in the Internet Security, Applications, Authentication and Cryptography (ISAAC) group at the University of California, Berkeley. Within a day, Wagner and Goldberg had found a fatal cryptographic flaw in COMP128, the algorithm used to protect the identity inside the SIM. They created a system to exploit the flaw by repeatedly asking the SIM to identify itself; by processing the responses they were able to extract the secret from inside the SIM.

“There’s no way that we would have been able to break the cryptography so quickly if the design had been subjected to public scrutiny”, says David Wagner. “Nobody is that much better than the rest of the cryptography research community.” David Wagner was previously known for his work on the breach of CMEA, a cipher used in digital cellphones. As in this case, the cryptographers who did the work on CMEA blamed the design process for the insecurity of the system.

The BIG Impact

Today, there are billions of people using GSM phone technology. So, cracking GSM encryption has BIG concerns underneath.

What’s at stake if GSM-encrypted traffic is no longer secure?

Loss of Privacy over Voice Calls – Any damn GSM call can be intercepted. This means everything.
Jamming calls – Today, Jammer’s do exist but new kind of jamming technology can be introduced that can take down communications in larger areas.
Financial institutions that use text messages as authentication tokens would be in trouble.
Business – Almost all Business end-customers will be impacted, the potential loss to the business could touch billions.
PDA and Smart-phone IP Traffic – Users that surf web, use internet over their phones for Business EMail will no longer be secure.
Why Nohl wants this move?

As a cryptography expert, Nohl understands this. He explained-

“We’re not creating a vulnerability but publicizing a flaw that’s already being exploited widely. Clearly we are making the attack more practical and much cheaper, and of course there’s a moral question of whether we should do that.”

It’s not just that he’s the first one to do it. GSM had been hackable since decades. There are devices, today, capable of cracking GSM encryption, though expensive. Nohl plans on offering the solution for free and that’s what could bring trouble.

Now the questions goto the GSM consortium, Telcos -

If GSM encryption is vulnerable, why haven’t the telcos/GSM done anything about it?
Why does people like Nohl have to come and show trigger to GSM authorities to get it fixed? Why can’t they fix it, when they know about it!

http://www.taranfx.com/the-unsecure-gsm-encryption-you-are-vulnerable-to-hack-the-dark-secret

…

Es que las escuchas telefónicas de este escándalo de espionaje se lograron a través de órdenes firmadas por dos jueces provinciales misioneros. El circuito era así: James le pasaba los datos a Guarda, éste a sus superiores y luego se incorporaban a causas penales.

Así, por ejemplo, Sergio Burstein, un familiar de una de las víctimas del atentado contra la AMIA que se oponía a la designación de Palacios al frente de la Metropolitana, fue investigado en el marco de una causa por homicio y contrabando. James había pasado su teléfono como el de un sospechoso de esa causa.

Ayer, los camaristas confirmaron los procesamientos por las escuchas al teléfono de Burstein. Pero luego los acusados fueron procesados por Oyarbide por otros casos en los que figuran como víctimas de espionaje abogados, comerciantes y empresarios. Hasta un cuñado de Macri fue escuchado a través de este sistema. Se llama Néstor Daniel Leonardo y hace un mes sufrió un sospechoso ataque.

…

Link

¿Tom Cruise involucrado en ‘chuponeo’? El actor estadounidense, que aún no se pronuncia sobre esta acusación, es acusado de espionaje por intervenir las llamadas de Michael Davis Sapir, el editor de una revista estadounidense.

El protagonista de Misión Imposible contrató al detective privado Anthony Pellicano para ‘chuponear’ la línea telefónica del periodista, que hoy exige el pago de US$5 millones como reparación por el daño causado, informó el portal Examiner.

Pero las diferencias entre Cruise y Sapir no son nuevas. En 2001, el actordemandó al periodista por US$100 millones luego que este dijera tener un video que demostraba la homosexualidad de la estrella de Hollywood. El caso no llegó a mayores tras el acuerdo de ambas partes.

Sin embargo, ahora Sapir sostiene que el investigador privado hizo grabaciones ilegales a su número de teléfono durante el tiempo en que duraron los juicios de 2001. “Estas acusaciones son basura, nosotros nunca contratamos a Pellicano para que trabajara en el caso Sapir”, dijo Bert Fields, abogado del actor.

Link

SÃO PAULO – A Gold Lock aumentou para US$ 250 mil, em ouro, o prêmio para seu desafio mundial de decriptação, lançado no começo do mês passado.

O valor, que inicialmente era de US$ 100 mil, será entregue aos concorrentes que conseguirem derrotar a proteção de criptografia de voz criada pela empresa.

“Desde 2003 temos mostrado a todos como os nossos produtos oferecem proteção inquebrável para sua voz e transmissões de dados, porém, falar é fácil. Por isso, resolvemos colocar nossas reivindicações para o teste final, convidando qualquer um que acredita ter as habilidades para nos vencer”, disse Noam Copel, CEO da Gold Lock.

O conceito do desafio é simples. A companhia disponibilizou na rede um trecho de conversa que utiliza uma de suas soluções de criptografia. O desafiante que conseguir decifrá-la levará o prêmio e conseguirá um cargo na Gold Lock.

Até o momento, o arquivo já foi baixado mais de mil vezes. O aumento no valor do prêmio foi planejado para aumentar o interesse dos hackers.

A companhia informa que seu sistema muda as chaves várias vezes para cada chamada, o que torna praticamente impossível o “zoom in” em um conjunto específico de chaves e decifrá-lo.

“Eu não acho que há chance de eu entregar o ouro. Nenhum indivíduo, grupo ou agência de inteligência possui as habilidades, tecnologia ou tempo necessário para derrotar a nossa tecnologia”, disse Copel.

Para saber mais sobre o concurso e baixar a pré-gravação de 10 minutos de arquivo, visite o site oficial do desafio.

http://info.abril.com.br/noticias/seguranca/desafio-de-decriptacao-vai-pagar-us-250-mil-10122009-32.shl

https://www.gold-lock.com/app/en/product/CompetitorAnalysis

17/12/2009 – El ex oficial de la Policía Federal fue citado este jueves para ampliar su declaración indagatoria, en el marco de la causa por escuchas telefónicas irregulares. El pasado lunes, Jorge “Fino” Palacios negó los cargos que se le imputan.

…

Link

]]> http://sigillu.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/filizzola-niega-denuncia-sobre-escuchas-telefonicas/feed/ 0 sigillu http://sigillu.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/ohio-supreme-court-protects-cell-phones-from-search-and-seizure/ http://sigillu.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/ohio-supreme-court-protects-cell-phones-from-search-and-seizure/#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2009 14:09:14 +0000 douglashaskins http://sigillu.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/ohio-supreme-court-protects-cell-phones-from-search-and-seizure/ ]]>

According to the New York Times, this was a very narrow majority on a key 4th Amendment issue. The majority opinion hinged on deeming a cell phone to be qualitatively and quantitatively different from closed containers, the standard to which the prosecutor was trying to hold the defendant’s cell phone.

The prosecutor was clearly not pleased, trying to paint this as an untenable form of technology based exceptionalism. That being said, he hasn’t decided whether or not he will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

I tend to think the court got this mostly right, not just given the vast amount of personal data potentially stored on a phone. Increasingly, phones are also edge devices that store credentials to even more information out on the network. I don’t think that was the case here, but the line is increasingly blurred. Pursuing a search through the device onto online spaces would clearly take it much more into the contentious grounds of online surveillance and access to third party information, not just rifling through seized personal effects.

http://thecommandline.net/2009/12/15/ohio-supreme-court-protects-cell-phones-from-search-and-seizure/

]]> http://sigillu.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/how-to-get-an-iphones-uuid/feed/ 0 sigillu iPhone01B sigillu.jpg