An earlier post, talking about vulnerabilities and the lack of an appropriate market response, said: ____________ We're talking about phone calls -- did all of the well-publicized cellular eavesdropping (Prince Charles, Newt Gingrich (then a major US politician), and more) prompt a change? Well, there are now US laws against that sort of phone eavesdropping gear -- a big help.... ____________
I think the most publicized cases of cellular interception, including the two mentioned above, were interceptions of analog calls. Such interception was not too hard to do. In some cases you could pick up one side of such calls on old American TV sets (sets that tuned above channel 69 on the UHF dial). Much better interception equipment was still pretty simple. I understand that there was sometimes enough talker echo that, if you listened on the base-to-mobile link you could understand both sides of the call-you didn't even need two receivers. However, interception of digital wireless signals requires more skill and expense. Interception of CDMA is harder than interception of GSM. Interception and recovery of encrypted digital is still more difficult. The 3G wireless standards permit AES quality encryption of the voice-I don't know if carriers have this turned on. I am pretty sure they have it or the equivalent turned on for functions that limit theft of service such as the initial activation of service on CDMA networks. I do know of business executives who, when informed of the ease of interception of analog cellular, changed their behavior. Chuck Jackson --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
