Jan
6
Finally happy to be a Sprint customer!
January 6, 2010 | 3 Comments
I am finally happy to be a Sprint customer! Why you may ask — it’s certainly not for the outstanding signal service I get from my home in Brooklyn (one whole bar). No, it’s because Sprint (and Verizon) run on the CDMA network. What does that mean? Well, it means that anyone with the coding knowledge and 2 terabytes of space cannot intercept my phone calls. Sorry AT&T and T-Mobile customers on the GSM network… you’re kind of screwed.
Known best for the carrying the all-mighty iPhone, AT&T not only doesn’t have the network capabilities to provide unlimited data plans they promised new customers, they also don’t have a secured network to ensure their customer’s phone calls aren’t being jacked!
German computer scientist Karsten Nohl announced that he has “cracked GSM, in an effort to demonstrate security weaknesses in global wireless systems”. So who will that (potentially) affect? Well, according to a report published by Nohl, 80% of the mobile phone markets utilizes GSM… that’s about 4 billion users in over 200 countries. Why would T-Mobile and AT&T use GSM if the potential threat is so large??
Now here comes the million-dollar question… how can you intercept AT&T and T-Mobile phone calls?? Well if you know any hackers they could probably tell you as the coding has spread via word-of-mouth using file-sharing services such as Bit Torrent. The A5/1 Security Project Wiki can also be used as a reference; created to publicize cryptographic weaknesses found in today’s cellular networks.
References:
- http://zedomax.com/blog/2009/12/31/cellular-hack-how-to-hack-gsm/
- http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/gsm_cracked_falls_german_engineer
- http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/attachments/1479_26C3.Karsten.Nohl.GSM.pdf
- http://reflextor.com/trac/a51
Comments
3 Comments so far
Yes, but I can have people listen in on my phone conversations in Europe, where my phone works just fine… ; )
Touché! Technically, they can either way… : )
This is not false !