GSM encryption crack made public

GSM encryption crack made public

Posted Jan 6, 2010 23:02 UTC (Wed) by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624)
Parent article: GSM encryption crack made public

The fact that A5 was known to be weak goes back to at least 1994 as the Cambridge crypie Ross Anderson wrote on this to uk.telecom (amongst others), now archived here:

http://yarchive.net/phone/

Regarding the source of the weakness, he wrote:

Indeed, my spies inform me that there was a terrific row between the NATO signals agencies in the mid 1980's over whether GSM encryption should be strong or not. The Germans said it should be, as they shared a long border with the Evil Empire; but the other countries didn't feel this way, and the algorithm as now fielded is a French design.

It's not clear here if he's talking about A5/1 or A5/2.

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