Speaking of security, let's talk a little bit about encryption.
Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide rely on satellite phones for communicate in remote or war-torn, or disaster areas. Although expensive, many customers are willing to pay that pretty penny to have reliable communication in ares that don’t have conventional mobile phone service -- usually that means government contractors or employees who are sent out to far-flung corners of the globe. Like modern mobile phones, satellite phones are equipped with built-in encryption that make it theoretically difficult for anyone monitoring radio signals across the airwaves to know what is being said.
However, German researchers at Ruhr University Bochum, in western Germany, said earlier this month that they’ve now managed to crack two of the commonly-used encryption protocols, know as A5-GMR-1 and A5-GMR-2. A5-GMR-1 is related to an existing cypher, called A5/2, which was introduced in 1999, but was quickly cracked by another team of security researchers. Since July 1, 2006, the GSM Association said it would not longer support A5/2, and would go back to the an earlier version, A5/1, which was believed to have been stronger. But, A5/1 itself was later cracked in 2009.
These satellite phone encryption protocols are commonly used in the Thuraya satellite phones used in Africa, Eurasia and the Middle East. The Bochum team has published their results in a new paper, called: “Don't Trust Satellite Phones.”
To learn more, I spoke with Benedikt Driessen, one of the paper's authors.