In a struggling economy it's good to see at least some things are getting cheaper
In a struggling economy it's good to see at least some things are getting cheaper. In a demonstration at the recent DEFCON conference in Las Vegas, researcher Chris Paget (a long time source of good information on mobile phone vulnerabilities) demonstrated how GSM mobile telephone systems could be subverted using cheap, almost off the shelf, hardware and open source software.
Whereas well-funded adversaries and Government spooks have always been able to intercept GSM calls using devices that pretend to be a mobile phone tower, Paget's demonstration showed that anyone could potentially do the same for around รบ1000 (given the UK's need for budget cuts and the massive price tag associated with GCHQ's Intercept Modernisation Program, perhaps this would be a good suggestion to save some taxpayer funds :)
Until now GSM transmissions have been considered relatively safe, as interception required expensive hardware. With proof of concept implementations on mobile devices in development, it seems prudent to assume they won't be so private in the future. Corporate communications security policies should be amended to address this, particularly where mobile phones are used for sensitive commercial discussions (industrial espionage is another growth industry in hard times!)
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