The GSM technology used by the majority of the world’s mobile phones will get some scrutiny at this week’s Black Hat security conference, and what the security researchers there have to say isn’t pretty. On Friday, an open source group released software that cracks the A5/1 encryption algorithm used by some GSM networks. Called Kraken, [...]

Following a recent crack of the simpler A5/1 standard, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science say they have cracked the A5/3 security cipher (nicknamed Kasumi) by using what’s known as a “sandwich” attack. The group accomplished its goal by creating a distinguishing trait for the key and using just four related keys to determine [...]

Earlier this week I noticed an article “Govt Calls for shared Network Towers” in the news. Cambodia’s Minister of Posts and Telecommunications called on the country’s nine mobile phone networks to share their network infrastructure to reduce the number of towers being deployed in the country. Requests to reduce tower numbers are becoming more common, [...]

The Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) today published its latest GSM/3G Market Update. Amongst the issues reported this month, GSA has confirmed that 300 WCDMA networks have been commercially launched in 126 countries. WCDMA has achieved approaching 75% market share of commercial 3G networks with an estimated 410+ million subscriptions. GSA says that 95% of [...]