Hacker 2/HACKER2.mdf/cud/cud510g.txt

Text File | 1995-01-03 | 4KB | 80 lines

Date: Sat, 30 Jan 93 13:19:38 +0000
From: "G.R.L. Walker" <[e-mail]>
Subject: File 7--Cell-phone encryption and tapping

        Transcript of an article in New Scientist, 30 Jan 1993

Spymasters fear bug-proof cellphones
(Barry Fox, Bahrain)

One of the jewels of Europe's electronics industry, the new
all-digital cellular phone system GSM, may be blocked from export to
other countries around the world by Britain's Department of Trade and
Industry. The DTI objects to the exports because it believes the
encryption system that GSM uses to code its messages is too good.
Sources say this is because the security services and military
establishment in Britain and the US fear they will no longer be able
[to] eavesdrop on telephone conversations. Few people believe GSM
needs such powerful encryption, but the makers of GSM complain that
the DTI has woken to the problem five years too late.

At MECOM 93, a conference on developing Arab communications held in
Bahrain last week, many Gulf and Middle Eastern countries sought
tenders for GSM systems, but the companies selling them could not
agree terms without the go-ahead of the DTI. Qatar and the United Arab
Emirates want to be first with GSM in the Gulf, with Bahrain next. GSM
manufacturers are worried that the business will be lost to rival
digital systems already on offer from the US and Japan.

The Finnish electronics company Nokia, which is tendering for
Bahrain's GSM contract, says "There is no logic. We don't know what is
happening or why." A DTI spokeswoman would only say that exports
outside Europe would need a licence and each case would be treated on
its own merits.

The GSM system was developed in the mid-1980s by the Groupe Special
Mobile, a consortium of European manufacturers and telecommunications
authorities. The technology was supported by European Commission and
the GSM standard has now been agreed officially by 27 operators in 18
European
 countries.

GSM was designed to allow business travellers to use the same
portable phone anywhere in Europe and be billed back home. This is
impossible with the existing cellphone services because different
countries use different analogue technology.

The plan was for GSM to be in use across Europe by 1991, but the
existing analogue services have been too successful. No cellphone
operator wants to invest in a second network when the first is still
making profits. So GSM manufacturers have been offering the technology
for export.

Whereas all existing cellular phone systems transmit speech as
analogue waves, GSM converts speech into digital code. Foreseeing that
users would want secure communications, the GSM designers built an
encryption system called A5 into the standard; it is similar to the US
government's Data Encryption Standard. British Telecom was involved in
developing A5, so the British government has special rights to control
its use.

To crack the DES and A5 codes needs huge amounts of computer power.
This is what alarmed the FBI in the US, which wants to be able to
listen in to criminals who are using mobile phones. It also alarmed
GCHQ, the British government's listening post at Cheltenham which
monitors radio traffic round the world using satellites and sensitive
ground-based receivers.

The DTI has now asked for the GSM standard to be changed, either by
watering down the encryption system, or by removing encryption
altogether. This means that GSM manufacturers must redesign their
microchips. But they cannot start until a new standard is set and the
earliest hope of that is May.

Any change will inevitably lead to two different GSM standards, so
robbing GSM of its major selling point -- freedom to roam between
countries with the same phone. Manufacturing costs will also rise as
new chips are put into production.

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