Time To Encrypt (Again): Researcher Says Data Over Cell Networks Is Easy To Read
Written by Frank HayesAugust 11th, 2011
Many mobile-commerce transactions running on GSM smartphones are easy to intercept and monitor, according to a presentation on Wednesday (August 10) at the Chaos Computer Camp hacking conference in Germany. Cryptographer Karsten Nohl of Security Research Labs was researching how well cell-phone data was secured when he discovered that most GSM cell operators (in the U.S. that's AT&T and T-Mobile) use either weak encryption or none at all on the GPRS networks that carry their phones' data. (Newer 3G networks use better encryption, but wherever there's not enough 3G, phones fall back to GPRS.)
Nohl told The New York Times that mobile operators turn off GPRS encryption "to be able to monitor traffic, to detect and suppress Skype, or to filter viruses, in a decentralized fashion." Unfortunately, that also means thieves with reprogrammed mobile phones can eavesdrop on many M-Commerce transactions using GSM smartphones. And even if payment-card information gets its own layer of encryption, there's still plenty of other personal data that customers would probably prefer not to fall into the hands of thieves.
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One Comment | Read Time To Encrypt (Again): Researcher Says Data Over Cell Networks Is Easy To Read
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-Christine
August 11th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Why on earth do people trust the network layer anymore? ESPECIALLY when wires are not required? Ite baffles and appalls me that software vendors negligently leave data protection out of the equation.