German Crypto Mobile Announced 112
XMLGuy writes "The first German crypto mobile phone is to be built by Rohde and Schwarz - a company that took over the hardware-crypto segment of Siemens at the beginning of May this year. At the push of a button the mobile phone (they are called "handies" here in Germany) will set up an encrypted communications link with your communications partner.
According to heise online, the mobiles then use a 128 bit key to encrypt the channel. One of the technicians is quoted as saying that "A thousand pentium computers would need over 10 years to decrypt a 10 minute phone-call". The mobiles will cost around 6000 German Marks.
" You know where the the fish is for translation.
128 bits encryption is strong (Score:1)
Take a look at the RC5-64 challenge. The key is "only" 64 bits. According to www.distributed.net [distributed.net], the computing power on RC5 is about 160000 PII 266Mhz working 24/7. d.net RC5-64 effort has been running since 1997 and it has not yet exhausted 50% of the keyspace. 128 bits encryption would be 2**64 times harder than RC5-64. That's a lot more!
This is why I believe 128 bit encryption is not crackable with today's technology. We would need a serious breakthrough in computer technology to crack 128 bits. 128 bits encryption might be secure for a couple of centuries even taking into account Moore's law.
Don't underestimate the power of numbers.
Re:A better way to do this? -- Sadly..no (Score:2)
The "thousand pentium" quote must be nonsense (Score:1)
I find it very hard to believe that anyone implementing a new system would build something that it was so practical to break. In general, it's not much harder to build a cryptosystem requiring all of the world's computing resources for millenia. Either they had some *very* funny tradeoffs to make, or they've seriously screwed up, and employed people with no clue about modern crypto engineering, or that quote came from someone who did not appreciate the real strength of the cryptographic components used.
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Re:So Germany IS More Free Than the US? (Score:2)
Yes, I'm sure you were. However, who by ? what country did you hear this in ? The USA doesn't need government sponsored propoganda, they have something much more powerful - profit sponsored propoganda. Any mainstream newspaper or television program that tried to criticise America would lose audience fast. It would be "un-American" of them, and besides Americans all know that the USA is the best country in the world, so they would not just piss people off, they would lose respect because people wouldn't believe it anyway.
There is a vicious circle at work here. The main reason that Americans are so incredibly patriotic is that throughout their lives almost everything they hear reinforces the notion that America is the best (richest, most free, most tolerant, etc) country on earth, so why shouldn't they be proud of that. However, since the majority believes this completely, it would be very unwise for a publication that wishes to be bought, or a show that wants to be watched, to say anything that reflects badly on America [as compared to other countries]. The media can happily complain about things like crime, drugs, morality, etc but these are internal issues, and if any comparison is offered it will generally be with the past rather than with foreign countries. It just won't get mentioned.
Foreign news is virtually never mentioned on US television unless it's in such a way as to reflect well upon America. For example, you'll get a story like - "American troops fly into East Timor to protect the natives from gangs of thugs." The earlier story: "US trained and funded death squads kill 1/3rd of population of East Timor to supress an independence movement that could damage the interests of US oil companies in nearby waters" is much less likely to make people feel good about themselves, happy with your publication, and likely to read you again. This phenomena is not unique to US by any means, it's just rather more pronounced there than other places I've stayed.
IMO America is a good country in many respects, but general knowledge about the state of the world outside the US is not it's strong point.
Re:There is a backdoor.. (Score:1)
I'm not suggesting that we should all run out and use DES for serious security, but please don't spread the misinformation that it has a backdoor.
Re:Swedes has sold Crypto GSM phones for a long ti (Score:1)
Swedes has sold Crypto GSM phones for a long time. (Score:3)
Sectra in Sweden has been selling crypto GSM phones for a very long time.
http://www.sectra.se/ [sectra.se]
Check out their "Tiger-phone" [sectra.se] which is a combo GSM/DECT phone with built in crypto.
Sold to the Swedish military.
Whither Starium? (Score:1)
This almost two-year-old Wired article [wired.com] says they were planning to release "sub-US$100 telephone scrambling devices" by "early-2000."
Anyone know what's taking so long?
-Jeff, www.scrollbar.com [scrollbar.com]
Re:Some more translation (Score:2)
What happens if your $3k phone turns out to have a weakness in it? A crummy pseudo-random number generator or a more mundane bug? Or what happens when your neighbor buys a doohickey that plugs into a visor or a WinCE box that gives him the same functionality for $150? How do you know you can trust the chip?
But are they open? (Score:1)
Can we really trust a company to Do The Right ThingTM? Sure, even with a backdoor.. this will keep you from being spied on by your kid sister, but what about Big Brother?
We must demand that our devices using encryption MUST be open enough that we can verify our freedom.
Re:Eggs in a hailstorm (Score:2)
sure sure.. (Score:2)
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This is not as impressive as it sounds: (Score:3)
As outlined in Cracking DES [oreilly.com], an algorithm can take years to crack using a conventional computer. However, if you custom design a computer from the ground up (not as difficult as it might sound) to specifically attack the algorithm, the encryption can fall quite quickly, as it does with DES. *
I think that encryption should be evaluated on the strength of the algorithm, not on how many brute force attacks it would take to defeat it. (This is what is mentioned by Schneier in Applied Cryptography [counterpane.com].)
* For those of you who doubt this, read the book.
So what ? (Score:1)
EADS-DSN [eads-dsn.com]
The subject line demanded it (Score:2)
Diffie: Holey encryption algorithms, Hellman! It's the Encrypted Signal!
Hellman: Indeed. The RIAA must be up to its old tricks. Quickly, Diffie--to the German Crypto Mobile!
Diffie: Atomic random key generators to power . . . one-time pad to speed . . .
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Re:GSM Encryption (Score:1)
The data streaming between the phones and towers of a GSM network is already encrypted with one of two algorithms, A5/1 and A5/2. A5/1, the "stronger" variant, is in use in virtually every GSM network currently operating.
Yup, the data is encrypted between the towers and the phone.
But not between the towers and the switch!!
So, it is very easy for any government agency to listen in on a conversation.
Because there is no encryption between the tower and the central switch!!
Re:Am I wrong? (Score:1)
On any hardware device, especially one with analog circuits (like a cell phone) there can be plenty of sources of randomness: background static in the microphone, fluctuations of the RF signal. It should be quite easy to seed a random number generator from these sources. Even if the random number generator is known, it is not always possible to even remotely guess at what the next numbers will be without knowing the seed and internal state.
An analogue cellphone?
Do they still make them?
In Europe, Asia and Afrika we all use digital cellphones.
This is called GSM.
And this system already uses encryption.
Between the phone and the tower...
3G does some level of distribution (Score:1)
>
> An Idea that I've been kicking around in
> my head for a while is the concept of a
> distributed mobile phone. Each Phone acts
> as a transmitter for your call, and a
> forwarder for other calls.
> Thus, as the number of phones sold
> increases, so does the total range of
> the system
Actually, the specifications for 3G phones do
have something like this as a capability.
However, I can't quite see this one flying as
the general basis for a network - I mean, do
you really want your battery power to be used
up forwarding other people's phone
conversations?
Re:Ok, I think some people here are missing the po (Score:2)
But you're right, even weakly obfuscating something stopps atleast 95% of all attackers. Not everything needs to have military grade encryption..
-henrik
Re:There is a backdoor.. (Score:2)
But you're right. There's no publically known way of breaking DES that is better than bruteforce. Then again, with a 56bit keyspace it doesnt matter, because searching through 2^56 keys is practical. (TrippleDES is probably secure though, with a 112bit keyspace)
But then again, a pissing contest over keylengths is irrelevant. There are better ways of cracking encryption.
-henrik
There is a backdoor.. (Score:3)
Quote 2:
1) A 128 bit string has roughly 10^38 possible combinations (keys)
2) Assuming a pentium chip can perform 1 million decryptions per second of the algorithm 1000 pentiums working for 10 years would try roughly 10^17 keys - which is equivalent with a 58 bit real key length. (suspiciosly similar to DESes 56bit, maybe they use DES with some custom key magic to be able print "128bit keys" on the box)
This means there's a better than bruteforce way of cracking the algorithm used and this phone probably shouldnt be used for anything important (as we all know, des can be cracked in hours by d.net, probably in minutes or seconds by intelligence agencies)
Also, even if it isnt DES.10000 pentiums (1yr) - or more likely, a custom chip (much less), is not outside the reach of intelligence agencies or even large companies.
-henrik
This can easily be cracked (Score:1)
http://www.ii.uib.no/~larsr/craptology/crv0n1-2
This is a good read on the subject
Re:Am I wrong? (Score:1)
Re:A better way to do this? -- Sadly..no (Score:1)
When you do routing, esp in the center of the population, the maximum amount of energy would be used all the time. Thus, a 50 hr telephone would only last about 1/2 an hour. That's just not acceptable.
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Encryption or frequency hopping? (Score:1)
Any decent 128bit encryption would require a 1000 pentiums to work for... oh say.. the lifetime of the planet earth (at which point the power would fail). If it only takes 10 years then that smacks of weakened security mandated by the government.
From the article it almost sounds like they are using frequency hopping with a 128bit random function. I'm not sure but that might be legal in more countries because the data is not actually encrypted or decrypted - just the frequency path followed.
Some more translation (Score:3)
Re:A better way to do this? Already been done... (Score:3)
Re:This is not as impressive as it sounds: (Score:1)
If it 'only' takes a thousand Pentiums (Pentium 133? Pentium 1GHz?) around ten years to crack their 128-bit algorithm, it's one lousy algorithm that doesn't use all 128-bits of entropy.
A custom hardware design is very effective compared to a conventional attack (as aptly demonstrated by EFF and distributed.net [distributed.net] in the RSA DES contests). However, it doesn't matter how fast your chip is if you use long enough keys (and >=128-bit keys are long enough). Try to do the math: even if testing a huge 10^12 keys per second (or more) it will take a long time to bruteforce a 128-bit key.
Basically all algorithms used today are 'strong', or rather, believed to be strong. This includes DES, Blowfish, RC4, RC5, IDEA, CAST etc. This means that it is only their key length that decides how hard it is to crack. Viewed in this light DES' 56-bit isn't enough. RC4 used with a small 40-bit or 56-bit is also vulnerable. Even so, the DES and RC4 algorithms themselves are strong. This is why it is feasible to bruteforce DES with a custom VLSI chip design: the key is simply to short. Doing a bruteforce on a strong 128-bit algorithm is futile whether doing a hardware or software-based attack.
Schnell Robin! (Score:2)
(Sorry if I botched the German; it's been years.)
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Re:A better way to do this? (Score:1)
Does this sound like a viable phone model?
Sounds dodgy to me. Every time you lose part of the route you're probably going to take a noticeable amount of time to reestablish it. If your phone or any other on the route is in a fast moving vehicle this is going to make the conversation break up completely.
Sometimes its better to hide out in the open. (Score:1)
But think about it. What does going out of your way as a consumer to buy 128-bit encryption do? NSA and other snooping agencies in the world have a problem. Soo many communications going on, every teenager has a cell phone now adays yakin about who knows what. But if you go out of your way to encrypt your conversation, then in my opinion you FLAG yourself as worthy of some super-brute force snooping action.
Now if EVERYONE had the simple luxury of one push of a button crypto, then awesome. You'd be hiding out in the open again. But I bet they pay particular interest to the first bunch to run up and grab these phones.
Ohh Yes, can I buy a bullseye for my head too!
Just remember, the government likes to have about a decade or two of advance technology above and beyond what the consumers have access to. They like that buffer zone of protection, so if they are ok with encryption now.. be afraid, be VERY afraid of the new toys they probably just developed.
There was a time the whole world didn't even have billions of dollars, now we have a country that commands trillions and only recently decided they have SOO MUCH, that they are now actually willing to give 1.35 trillion BACK to people, Woah.. they must REALLY be hiding something.
-Matthew
G3 DIY implementation? (Score:1)
And a bans on software implementations would a lot harder to enforce.
Xix.
Comment removed (Score:4)
Ahh yes... (Score:1)
Software encrpytion through GSM phone (Score:2)
Re:Pentium what? (Score:1)
2^128 keys, divided by 1000 machines, divided by 315576000 seconds in 10 years, gives right around 10^27, or 0.5*10^27 trial encryptions on average. So these 1000 machines would have to do 0.5*10^27 trial encryptions per second in order to break a 128 bit key. Assuming a 20-cycle/encryption machine, that means that you'd need a 10^28 Hz machine for each of these. That's a 10 Giga-Giga-Giga Hz machine (there's probably another name for it).
So assuming that the encryption scheme is sound (requiring brute force for attacks), this is a lot more secure than they're suggesting here...
So Germany IS More Free Than the US? (Score:1)
I mean we can't let people hide things from the government, can we? What with national security, organized crime, the war on drugs and all the usual excuses! These things take precedence over freedom! Not.
You're thinking of something else; cypherpunks GSM (Score:2)
GSM doesn't use ECC - it uses a couple of algorithms called A5, A8, etc. which look something like a fast fourier transform. Ian Goldberg, a Berkeley grad student, cracked them over lunch one day (he's not Israeli, just Canadian.) The authentication is a bit stronger than the message encryption. One of the entertaining results of the crack was the discovery that, while the keys are too short to start with, most of them have 10 bits set to 0, so they're even easier to crack, which is a strong argument that there was government pressure on the development process.
Hardware vs. Software for Crypto (Score:2)
But the main reason you'd do crypto in hardware in a cellphone is that callphones tend to do the heavy lifting in ASICs and not have a lot of general-purpose computing horsepower or memory - it's easier to put the crypto into the ASIC than find somewhere else to wedge it.
Re:Software encrpytion through GSM phone (Score:2)
The other obvious approach is to add a cellular modem to the cellphone, as long as it can get at least ~6.5kbps of throughput (one of the tighter compressions used in US digital cellphones) and set up a modem call. This needs a bit more hardware, but modems can be pretty compact, and again you've already done the compression in an ASIC. If you can't get fast enough modem speeds, you either need a tighter but nastier-sounding codec, e.g. 4800 baud or (gak!) 2400 baud or 1200 baud LPC (Speak-And-Spell is a trademark of somebody or other.) Or you can cheat and make a double-sized cellphone that's doing two simultaneous calls - klugey, but if you can afford DM6000 for a phone, you should be able to live with a much cheaper phone that burns minutes twice as fast.
Another approach is to wait for those 3G phones that the EU governments scammed their phone companies into paying giga-Euros of debt money for in the license auctions. Shouldn't cost any DM6K for one of those.
You're misinterpreting hype as precision - it aint (Score:2)
I usually give crypto-cracking speeds (for adequately strong algorithms) in terms of planet-sized computers and billions of years, because that's obviously infeasible to crack, and if it's not, you should have made the keys a few bits longer. For RC4, that doesn't even cost you anything :-) Since you know how to calculate using exponentials, keep in mind that given good algorithms, it's trivial to make things that take that long to crack, and are so far out of reach of intelligence agencies that you should be worrying about other threats, like keyboard sniffers planted in your phone or passwords on yellow sticky notes. Single-DES can be brute-forced - John Gilmore proved that with the EFF Deep Crack machine, and the distributed crackers also showed they can do it. But Triple-DES isn't just 3 times as hard - it's 2**56 times as hard (total strength is only 112 bits, not 168, because there's a meet-in-the-middle attack that uses 2**56 pieces of memory, which is currently impractical.) RC4 is adjustable from near-0 to 255 bits of key length, with much less work per key brute-forced, but 128 bits is enough. The new US NIST Advanced Encryption Standard (contest won by Rijndael from Belgium) has modes for 128, 192, and 256 bits, if I remember correctly - even the weakest mode is strong enough for Earth-bound attackers.
The hard part of the crypto isn't the symmetric algorithm - it's the public-key part. I suppose they *could* have used 128-bit algorithms for that, but Elliptic Curve isn't strong enough at that length, and they'd be expected to know it. If you're not worried about traffic analysis, you could build a Kerberos-like system using 3DES or AES that fits in 128-bit keys.
6000 DM ?!?!? (Score:2)
I'm afraid this will seriously reduce the market for this nifty little toy.
Thomas Miconi
Re:There is a backdoor.. (Score:1)
Possibly the guy who said that just didn't know what he was talking about though.
Back when GSM was being developed, Germany wanted it to include strong crypto, but France + UK overruled and so GSM crypto was crap. Maybe now Germany is getting it's way. It's actually kind of weird that France demanded poor crypto, because it's decrypted at the base stations and reencrypted when it's transmitted back out, so it can obviously be read rigth there. I guess they wanted to be able to tool around town listening to GSM conversations on the fly (people have found how to break some of the GSM algorithms in real time).
Surely only useful if both people have them (Score:1)
PHB: Wait, passwords? What if my phone is being monitored? I'd better encrypt this...
Tech:Wait! Those phones are way too expensive and I don't have one to decrypt yours!
PHB: [crackle, hiss, crackle, etc]
Re:cannon fodder? (Score:1)
No, you can't choose a key, that "punching" part is just about the button you have to press to get an encrypted connection instead of a normal one.
It says that a new key is chosen each time out of 10^38 (i.e. 2^128) possible ones; no word on how it defends against eavesdroppers. Sounds like it's actually only negligibly more secure than no encryption at all.
Re:They finally did it.... (Score:1)
Re:Pentium what? (Score:1)
Re:cannon fodder? (Score:2)
Of course, the real question is: how are the keys generated and transferred. If it's just a fixed key stored somewhere in the phone, it won't be long before someone manages to get it out and be able to listen in to everything said on those phones quite easily.
Re:dead (Score:1)
None of this computationally and bandwidth expensive overheads with PKI which no one trusts to the level necessary to protect a phone conversation.
GSM Encryption (Score:1)
The data streaming between the phones and towers of a GSM network is already encrypted with one of two algorithms, A5/1 and A5/2. A5/1, the "stronger" variant, is in use in virtually every GSM network currently operating.
Neither algorithm has been broken. However, the private key (Ki) stored in every subscriber's SIM (subscriber identity module) card (unique to each SIM card) has successfully been compromised by researchers for a university, I believe. This was reported in the news a while (18 months?) ago, but it can't be done over the air. As far as I know, you have to interface the SIM card with a PC and ask the SIM card to identify itself, using a slightly different salt each time. By doing this about 150,000 times (which takes about 8 hours), the private key can be computed.
If this stuff turns your crank, here are a few links to get you started:
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cannon fodder? (Score:1)
Mobile networks need centralised design (Score:2)
Why? It is takes a lot more power to send a signal than listen for one. Most new mobile phones nowadays can sit idle on the network for 5 days, but only stay on a call for 2 hours. While the power difference isn't spent entirely on transmitting (you also have to sample the audio, compress the data, time your transmissions on the network, and so on), a significant part of it is. Mobile networks are specifically designed to minimize the requirement for the phone to transmit, but instead very infrequently announcing "yeah, I'm still alive" to the nearby base stations. Given the amount of data you need to retransmit on a P2P network (and with redundancy to multiple peers to keep the data flowing if one node goes down or moves out of range unexpectedly), phones on a P2P mobile phone network would spend nearly their entire battery life resending other people's data streams. And then you have the problem of requiring gateways (centralised points, thus somewhat defeating the point of a distributed network) to communicate with devices outside the P2P network, or in another P2P cluster (on another continent, for instance), and how you pay for access to those gateways. And how you geographically locate the most appropriate peers to resend data to (GPS on every phone with location broadcast to peers?), and how it scales under load, and so on...
It's a cool idea in theory, but unfortunately it wouldn't be feasible in practice (I'm all for building public-owned networks, but I'm not prepared to have only a few hours battery life on my phone to facilitate this). Which is a shame, as it'd be cool to not have to pay mobile phone rates to talk to someone a few blocks away, and not have to rely on telcos with insufficient infrastructure.
What do those numbers realy mean? (Score:1)
pentium computers in this case means what? 75mhz? 1.5ghz? by saying pentium they really aren't saying much.
And here is the Moors Law break down:
In 15 years one computer will be equal to 1000 computers now. So just-around-the-corner the above will quote will look something like this:
One of the technicians is quoted as saying that "A quantum computer would need over 1 second to decrypt a 10 minute phone-call".
Brute Force? (Score:1)
I suspect the "10 year" figure is the estimate for going through all possible keys. This brute force method is an old standby for code-cracking because it works for almost everything, but many encryption algorithms allow more efficient attacks.
128 bits is a pretty large key to attack with brute force, but depending on algorithm they used (and the attacks it is vulnerable to) it may not be enough to stop serious efforts.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Re:That's great for our German friends... (Score:1)
Sure, you're just not allowed to make international calls *grin*.
Re:Pentium what? (Score:1)
I don't think the engineer who was cited, made any calculations. My bet is that he simply said this to emphasize the fact that it would take a lot of brute force to eavesdrop on such a call. After all, most people who will buy these things at this price, are the ones with money and without any real knowledge. And those people aren't interested in MIPS or algorithms, they just want to hear that it's (almost) impossible to crack.
Re:Some more translation (Score:1)
And of course, in the free West, being America, this will be verboten too (isn't it ironic that this word comes from the country that doesn't prohibit this?).
That's great for our German friends... (Score:1)
shameless (Score:1)
I see your Schwar[t]z is as big as mine!
Re:Ok, I think some people here are missing the po (Score:2)
Cool! (Score:1)
Re:A better way to do this? (Score:2)
Yeah, probably can work. The downsides are that as people move around you can lose connectivity for moments or minutes (although cell phones have this problem anyway to some extent, but this would be worse). To counteract that it would probably be necessary to keep several connections up simultaneously; in the hopes that there is atleast one route to the far end. That will mean that the phone will take a lot more current and will either be heavier or will flatten its batteries much more quickly.
The other difficulty is routing in a highly dynamic link map- everyone is moving around all the time; links will be going up and down like mad things...
Re:128 bits encryption is strong (Score:2)
The question really is this" how far ahead is Big Brother? If you read the history of the NSA (in a book like The Puzzle Palace) you will find out it is believed they are many years ahead of industry in these matters. (as if most people don't think that already.)
If I needed secure comms, I would get the best gear I could but ultimately I would be hoping that I was below Big Brother's radar. I'm not willing to bet my life on any of this crypto stuff. It takes more than gadgets... it takes good fieldcraft to communicate securely.
Not that I'm doing anything that needs crypto, but I suspect that will change when my local Illuminati cell finally recruits me. What are they waiting for??
10 years? That's IT? (Score:2)
Umm... I don't know about you people, but that seems really pathetic to me. Hell, Google has 4000 such machines, and they aren't even in the crypto business. And we all know that the only thing that has kept Cray in business in the last few years was the NSA. So, put two and two together. If you are important enough for the NSA to care about hearing your calls, all they need to do is to spend a little computer time on cracking it. This is assuming that there are no "shortcuts" in the protocol, weakness that can be exploited in less time than it would take to brute force it.
To give you a comparison to what REAL encryption, like PGP, would be able to withstand, my PGP e-mails would probably take more time to brute force using all today's computing power than the time that the universe has existed.
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RTFA (Score:1)
Germany first Krypto Handy goes now into series production. Outwardly the encoding Handy resembles Siemens a S3ï, but the TopSec GSM device mentioned brings the measuring technique specialist Rohde and black on the market. Originally the development was advanced by the Siemens area information and Communication mobile, until Rohde and black at the beginning of of May took over the business segment hardware encoding of Siemens.
Because conventional portable radio connections did not guarantee a complete privacy, Siemens researchers already developed a procedure, which makes a secured connection with genuine end to the end encoding in the Handy on push of a button one year ago. The Clou: The TopSec GSM " simulates " a speech transmission; the Handy for encoded discussions actually opens a GSM usual data channel however instead of the voice channel. This permits it to transfer encoded contents unchanged and transparency between two compatible receiving stations.
For the setting up of a normal unencrypted connection one selects like used the call number of its interlocutor. If the telephone call is to be encoded however, then one presses an accordingly programmed soft key before the push button. The device switches then into the data mode; an additionally inserted, only stamp-large module codes and scrambles the exchanged data so thoroughly that even secret services cannot monitor, so the manufacturer. The safe connection can be however only structured, even if the interlocutor is attached a suitable Handy had or its ISDN telephone to a suitable encoding module.
The devices of the communication partners exchange a new 128-Bit-Schluessel with each connection establishment. Each mark is selected another of 10 38 codes the available by coincidence procedures. " thousand Pentium computers would have to count over ten years, around the wording of a zehnminuetigen Telefonates to decode ", schwaermt a technician of the new procedure.
Theoretically everyone may acquire the Handy, but the cost price of approximately 6000 Marks might limit the set of the buyers drastically. In some countries is besides the application of the encoding technique expressly forbidden. First user of the TopSec GSM is the German Minister of the Interior Otto Schily; he got a device from the pilot lot given ( Gerard Ducasse ) / ( dz / c't)
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
I don't know who uses them now, but a few yearsago (Score:1)
Though, as I recall, that went badly for him.
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
Re:Some thoughts (Score:1)
In fact, I bet they have all conversations deciphered and "filtered" within one minute of the call is hung up.
I'd also have competing geeks in charge of seperate decryption centers - probably their decryption times are a point of pride within the "company" - sorta like Geordi LaForge tweaking the warp engines.
Ok.. I'm not sure about the following part, but it sounds kind of logical.
Coincidentally, once someone "cracks" the encryption (it is private/public key based) encryption on one mobile phone, it any further encryption rendered "useless" from that phone, or just for data coming into/ out of that phone?
hmm.. private keys are generated from a "random set of primes", if someone was to um.. "learn of" the code to make "random" numbers (because they are truly not random, but based upon some calculation that gives the appearance of "randomness" [is that a word?]), they could create private keys - or greately reduce the number of guesses in their attack on the encryption.
after all, if the sim card (whatever, the little id chip in the phones) is linked to the user of the phone through billing records, etc... I'm sure it has a serial number / date / time produced. If one had the random prime generator, they could considerably weaken this whole encryption scheme.
Of course, it would require the assistance of the Deutche Telecomm (or whoever).
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
Am I wrong? (Score:1)
Firstly, (basic question)
Once someone "cracks" the encryption (it is private/public key based) encryption on one mobile phone, it any further encryption rendered "broken" from that phone, or just for data coming into/ out of that phone?
Secondly, (kind of mind trippish)
From what I understand, private keys are generated from a "random set of primes", or a "super" long, prime, random number.
If someone was to um.. "learn of" the code to make "random" numbers (because they are truly not random, but based upon some calculation that gives the appearance of "randomness" )
and reproduce the conditions of the original generation of the private key - they could generate private keys - and greately reduce the number of guesses in their attack on the encryption.
After all, if the sim card (whatever, the little id chip in the phones) is linked to the user of the phone through billing records, etc... I'm sure it has a unique serial number / date / time / place produced burned into it.
If one had the code for the random prime generator, they could considerably weaken this whole encryption scheme.
Of course, such a project would require the assistance of the Deutche Telecomm (and/or whoever made the SIM cards/cell phones).
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
Re:Am I wrong? (Score:1)
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
Some thoughts (Score:2)
Also - you can be sure that encrypted calls will be decrypted by some government - after all -- their mindset is "if you have nothing to hide...". Especially in this situation, where the phones are not encrypted all the time (the user has to activly turn on security).
If you are attracting so much attention to yourself - I suppose use for this will be more for commercial purposes than planning terrorism.
hmm.. how much bandwidth does the call use? POTS is made to run with 4000hz of bandwidth, with the maximum data rate of about 56k (something about the maximum number of discrete signals possible within a certain block of bandwidth. Are calls going to sound good when they hit a land line?
If the cell phones do hit a land line somewhere, I'm sure that the call must "fit" into a "standard" voice grade telephone circuit. which is slightly different in europe, but the bandwidth alloted for each connection is very close (don't have my euro telecomm handbook with me now, sorry)
On a side note, the US Navy Seal teams use 256bit encryption, burst transmission technology in their headsets. That is some nice stuff - supposedly clear as a bell too. So nanana-boo-boo.
Hmm.. the canadian rcmp in BC use encrypted radio sometime too, its not phone, but kind of annoying not being able to hear the swat deployments like you used to be able too.
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off hyper caffeineated
Re:They finally did it.... (Score:2)
I think what's really giving the NSA, CIA, FBI, Mossad, M5, M6, etc. the shits is the disposable cell phone with X pre-paid minutes bought with $20 dollar bill.
If you're important (or notorious from the alphabet-agencies point-of-view) enough to need encryption, you're going to be better off with a simple anonymous phone (the same anonymous phone that every mom gives to her child before sending them off to school.)
OTOH, my understanding is that the disposable phones will be "send only", so the receipiant may still be vulnerable to bugs, etc... I guess will have to wait and see what comes out of the product pipeline over the next couple of years.
Re:They finally did it.... (Score:2)
The NSA will break into cold sweats when there's backdoor-less phone-to-phone encryption with arbitrary and generally large keys using well-known and trusted cryptosystems. I don't think it's going to happen for a while.
Pentium what? (Score:1)
The babelfish English: Thousand Pentium computers would have to count over ten years, around the wording of a zehnminuetigen Telefonates to decode
Exactly what kind of pentium do they mean? A P-90 or a P4 1.7GHz? I think an 'around-the-clock' idiom got lost, but I still could use something more specific. I didn't Babel the entire page, just that selection. If I missed something, please fill me in.
Re:Isolationist Conservatives Despair (Score:1)
That depends on whether they adopted an algorithm first conceived in the U.S. or whether they came up with one of their own. And to answer the question, no they won't. Anything that makes it harder to kep tabs on Americans is generally opposed by the feebs. And, if it's foreign software, the spectre of trojans can always be invoked, regardless of the facts or the availability of the source code. They know most users, even savvy ones, won't do a code review before plopping something on their system with no more guarantee than a 'word-of-mouth' recommendation. Just tell them it can't be trusted and it's verboten.
Re:Some thoughts (Score:1)
Well, what I've read about Echelon says they're key-word driven. If they automatically flag all encrypted communications, they can break them at their leisure, but then turnaround becomes a problem. Once you break it, you still have to index it. By the time you get that done, there might already be a big hole in the WTC. Useful for prosecution, if not prevention.
As to a backdoor, who knows? Europeans are very sensitive about this just now (and rightly so,) and they might embrace a non UK/USA(et. al.) solution even if they aren't German. I guess it comes down to the US' ability to compromise the design of whatever chip it is that does the heavy lifting.
Re:A better way to do this? (Score:1)
There are significant technical issues to surrmount wrt latency for quality voice transmission in this model. Also, switching the network would be a fascinating exercise in either telepathy or very very powerfull phone handsets, afaict.
~cHris--
Chris Naden
"Sometimes, home is just where you pour your coffee"
In other words.... (Score:2)
"A thousand pentium computers would need over 10 years to decrypt a 10 minute phone-call".
In other words this encryption in nothing for the hugh computing powers of the likes of echelon!
Nice features, but... (Score:2)
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
Re:They finally did it.... (Score:1)
I assume that you have not read the article (ok it's in German, so no blame on you). It is made quite clear that the encrypted connection is made on a data channel (9.6 kbit/s) between the two phones. The provider does only see the encrypted stream.
However it must be researched how the key exchange is done. I assume it's some sort of Diffie-Hellmann-Algorithm which might (under certain circumstances) be broken with a Man-In-The-Middle attack. Question is, how do they do the authentication. There's no information about this important feature available now.
--
They Obviously Don't Watch X-Files (Score:3)
Re:Eggs in a hailstorm (Score:2)
Well, not being a US citizen, I must say that I am damn glad that this tech did not originate in the US. That gives the rest of the world a chance to get a hold of it one day.
The US are such bastards when it comes to crypto that any crypto tech that is being developed there is likely to stay there, or only leave in a watered-down version.
I say hooray that non US companies are developing crypto, and keeping the US governments hands off the tech.
--
Why not software encryption in every mobile ? (Score:1)
Firmware hackers where are you ?
Re:Schnell Robin! (Score:1)
Cell phones and anonymity (Score:2)
In addition to this, here in europe, pay-as-you-go type cell plans are very very popular - you can walk into any radio-shack equivalent store and for the equivalent of $28 ( USD ) you can buy a package over the counter that gives you a number on your choice of the local services. Basically its just a smart-card chip you pop into your phone. No sign-up is required. You don't give your name or any details to anybody about who you are - just hand over the cash and get yourself a number. You have a limited amount of money on the card, and you can 'recharge' it buy buying a card with a code number from any convenience store that you punch into the phone to get more talk-time. Want a new number? Just buy a new smart-chip. There is nothing to prevent you from having a dozen of these.
These are full-service plans too, complete with voice-mail, and all the cool services. They also have roaming so that if you have a tri-band phone you can use this pretty much anywhere in the world ( price per minute goes up a lot of course ). But clever use of this system could mean totally anonymous world-wide phone service.
Now if you can combine this with medium-level encryption ( lets face it, 128-bit is not high these days, and a good cryptanalyst can certainly break this much easier than the claim of a thousand pentiums for a thousand years), we're really starting to see good secure private personal communications become and industry standard. I like it.
No Kidding. (Score:1)
What, a Pentium 133Mhz? Im sure that'll be really helpful.
Oh, joy! Not. (Score:1)
And, if you think this will protect you from goverment services, think again. Most large goverments (hint: America) could break that very easily (hint: Super Computer (Cray?)).
And dont get me started on the price!
Already Done? (Score:2)
In fact, it was the first commercial mainstream product that included crypto, this caused a few political headaches apparently. This was meant to be the reason why it wasn't opened to peer-review, and consequentially cracked in 1998 by an Israeli team. It was secure for 9-10 years, which isn't too bad.
Elliptical Curve is pretty smart, it requires very little CPU cycles.
Re:This is not as impressive as it sounds: (Score:1)
For example, why find an MD5 collision (128 bits) if all you need is to crack 40-bit RC4!
Re:Am I wrong? (Score:1)
As for the first question, most likely the key is used for a single session (phone call) and regenerated at each subsequent call. It is also definitely possible that the key may be regenerated during the phone call so every 10 seconds (for example) it may re-handshake with a new key thereby requiring an attacker to again crack the new encryption key.
Re:Am I wrong? (Score:1)
Eggs in a hailstorm (Score:2)
'Push of a button'. Gawd, I'd love to see that same button installed by default on M.S. Outlook, or Netscape Mail without a complex PGP install beforehand.
This said, however, I would like to praise those who continue to break down the walls of encryption FUD that the United States government law enforcement has pushed onto the American peopole, even if they work from outside. The American government strongly opposes encryption of all kinds in the hands of Americans or non-Americans because of the possibility that it will be used by terrorists and criminals. This *proves* to both USians and the rest of the world that this is not the case. There is a valid market for crypto.
Like an overprotective mother hen, the FBI, DOJ, and NSA have been working to keep americans safe inside of a non-crypto egg. We can't break out, as long as they have so many claws in both the legal process and communications industries. Usually eggs are good at keeping outside influcences out, but I strongly beleive that efforts like this from Germany (and the rest of the world) will be the beginning of a crypto hailstorm the likes of which will at once confound and terrify the ill-prepared USLE agencies and liberate Americans from the oppression created by a simple lack of privacy.
Now let's support these guys and let them know how much we want these phones in the U.S.. At about $2.6k, they'll cost as much as a top of the line workstation, but as the userbase grows, you can bet the price will shrink.
Re:sure sure.. (Score:1)
Is it just me, or did this headline make anyone else think of some kind of gadget-festooned vehicle for a teutonic superhero?
They finally did it.... (Score:1)
Shameless Plug for my website:
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Network over a 25 mile radius!
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Hey, at least I didn't use the BLINK tag!
Re:They finally did it.... (Score:1)
Propriatary Encryption vs. PGP (Score:1)
Re:G3 DIY implementation? (Score:1)
Isolationist Conservatives Despair (Score:2)
Ok, I think some people here are missing the point (Score:2)
This might sound silly to some, but things like this are a real problem. At least once every couple of years someone at U of A gets busted for using a scanner to evesdrop in on cordless phone calls. Now of course this is easily defeated by using a spread spectrum phone (DSS), however I'm sure that won't last. Sooner or later, we'll start to see scanners around that can listen in on those too (or for that matter they may be floating around and I just haven't heard about them). Same thing applies to cellphones. The technology will come out to listen in on them too. Well this adds another layer of significant difficulty. You really have to have a good reason to spend the time, effort and resources to crack an encrypted call like that.
As of right now, I don't think there is a need for these en masse, and the price certianly reflects that. However, I'm sure in the comming years there will be.
Re:Ok, I think some people here are missing the po (Score:2)
It's kinda like SSHing instead of telnet. I don't do it to keep the government, etc from looking in. If they want to see what I'm doing they can just get a warrant to search my computer. I do it to keep all the l33t hax0rs from looking in on my datastream. Of course I use a good, strong, encryption scheme (blowfish usually) since it's available, but I'd settle for plan ole' DES is I had to. That would mean that the only people capable of looking in on my stream wouldn't be able to.
Also another important factor of getting this going is working out all the general kinks. Perhaps later as small processors get cheaper and faster and as crypto laws loosen up we'll see better encryption implemented in phones. You have to start somewhere.
much better+cheaper options are around (Score:2)
Hardware encryption itself is also both flawed and unnecessary. With hardware, you can't tell what bugs or backdoors may be in there, and if you discover anything, you can't fix it.
There are options that are cheaper, more secure, and more standard around. Current laptops can do real time speech compression and encryption just fine, with software that uses known strong algorithms and is demonstrably without backdoors. You can plug in any of the wireless PCMCIA cards in there and have secure phone conversations over the Internet, not just another ccompatible ell phone user. If you need something smaller, a WinCE or LinuxCE handheld with a cellular phone/modem CF card will probably be a realistic option pretty soon.