Flying drone can intercept and snoop on GSM cell calls

[thewayne]

Built by two security experts to demonstrate that it is not difficult to intercept phone calls and that the GSM technical body did a really bad job of implementing security. It contains a cellular system capable of spoofing an actual tower, so you can trick AT&T and T-Mobile phones to connect through it and it can listen in directly, plus it will route the call to the ground so the target(s) might never know they've been intercepted. It has a tiny linux computer onboard with 340,000,000 word dictionary for brute-forcing passwords. And 11 antennas. And it's electric, so it would be pretty much silent when operating.

It's going to be shown at the DefCon conference in Las Vegas next week, I really would like to go to that one of these years.

http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2011/07/28/flying-drone-can-crack-wifi-networks-snoop-on-cell-phones/

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/07/29/1338253/Hackers-Flying-Drone-Now-Eavesdrops-On-GSM-Phones

Comments

[silveradept]

Does that mean they'll actually tighten up the standard so as to make it more secure?