Pilot Show: The 26c3 and GSM security

Hacker Medley

Welcome to Hacker Medley! We decided to try podcasting.

In our pilot show, Nat Friedman shares what he learned about mobile phone security at the 26th annual Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin.

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It’s our first effort, so it’s a little rough. But please let us know what you think so we can decide whether or not to keep making these!

If you want to learn more about the stuff Nat was describing, here are some handy links:

• GSM — SRSLY? Karsten Nohl’s talk in which he revealed his project to generate rainbow tables for A5/1.
• OpenBSC Harald Welte’s project to create a GPL’d GSM Base Station Controller (and associated pieces) as a platform for security research.
• A $250 Alcatel/Lucent BST on eBay. Use this to provide OpenBSC with a radio link.
• OpenBTS Another effort to create an open source GSM network using a USRP (universal software radio peripheral).
• A description of the baseband processor / application processor split in mobile phones.
• Interesting information about GSM security from the folks at CryptoPhone.
• Airprobe — a GSM sniffer project.
• Wikipedia’s explanation of rainbow tables.

The image above is Harald Welte presenting at the 26c3.