Three Billion Phones In Danger Of Being Hacked Mobile phones are meant to have some degree of privacy when it comes to conversations, but up to 3 billion could be at risk of being tapped.

The encryption technology used for voice calls is 15 years old and a way for the security barrier has been broken according to a hacker. Potentially, this could lead to criminals being able to listen in to confidential conversations by a criminal with a laptop and radio card.

Karsten Nohl, a Dutch researcher who happens to be a hacker, presented the methodology of cracking the encryption at a conference. Although the theoretical vulnerability of GSM mobile encryption has been known about for some time, experts where still surprised by the new research when they saw the hacking in reality.

Simon Bransfield-Garth, chief executive of security company Cellcrypt, says the risk could soon be real: “This news means the theoretical risk will become a very real one within the next six months,”

“This is a very worrying prospect for anyone that discusses valuable or confidential information over their mobile phone.”

79 per cent of workers talk about secret matters by phone every few days while 64 per cent do so daily, according to a survey by Cellcrypt. Stan Schatt of company ABI Research, said that the in the eyes of phone users, the main culprit of tapping mobile phones used to be the government, but now they have to be aware of criminals listening in for useful information.

Despite the alarming news, the mobile communications industry defends the GSM system.

“Hacks have been alleged before and have proven to be incorrect. The history and wide usage of GSM shows there’s good reason to have confidence in its security,” said Thomas Jonsson, a vice-president at Nokia.

The GSM Association has stated that academics are trying to crack the A5/1 algorithm but there has been no successful “practical attack” that can be used on live, commercial GSM networks.

Source: Mobile Marketing News