Kevin J. O’Brien reports:
A German computer engineer said Monday that he had deciphered and published the secret code used to encrypt most of the world’s digital mobile phone calls, in what he called an attempt to expose weaknesses in the security of the world’s wireless systems.
The action by the encryption expert Karsten Nohl aimed to question the effectiveness of the 21-year-old GSM algorithm, a code developed in 1988 and still used to protect the privacy of 80 percent of the world’s mobile calls.
“This shows that existing GSM security is inadequate,” Mr. Nohl, 28, told about 600 people attending the Chaos Communication Congress, a four-day computer hacker’s conference that runs through Wednesday here. “We are trying to push operators to adopt better security measures for mobile phone calls.”
Read more in The New York Times.