Sim card database hack gave US and UK spies access to billions of cellphones

[jakeXT]

Source: Guardian

American and British spies hacked into the world’s largest sim card manufacturer, stealing encryption keys that potentially gave them access to billions of cellphones around the world, according to documents newly released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The breach, revealed in documents provided to The Intercept, could have given the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ the power to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.

“It’s a big breach,” Matthew Green, a cryptologist at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, told the Guardian. “The problem is that the attacks could still be ongoing.”

Gemalto, the company targeted by the spy agencies, produces 2bn sim cards per year for clients including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. The Netherlands-based company operates in 85 countries around the world and provides cards to some 450 wireless network providers globally.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/19/nsa-gchq-sim-card-billions-cellphones-hacking

[bananas]

1. lol! nt

[JohnnyRingo]

2. Cellular communications will never be secure.

Even if the president signed an executive order, and Congress passed sweeping reform that strictly prohibits monitoring phone access... it'll still happen. No one now, in the past, or in the foreseeable future, can possibly be assured their private communication will remain so. Frankly, it's just the nature of the beast. Sending a signal over great distances can be intercepted, therefore some will.

I'd advise everyone adjust their telecommunications accordingly.

[PSPS]

4. True, but that doesn't imply citizens' approval of the government freely monitoring them

I know there are many people who are ok with this abrogation of the constitution including, it appears, our so-called "constitutional scholar" president (sorry, swooners.) But most people are outraged that everything they say, see and do are stored for posterity and future perusal in the Stasi's Utah Hard Drive.

[JohnnyRingo]

14. When I was a teen in the '60s...

We all knew better than to make drug deals on the big black phones we had back then. This isn't a 21st century concern of technology. Only the recently outraged youth of today are shocked that this can be happening in America. The rest of us know it's a fact of life and always has been.

The only solution is to abandon our smart phones, OnStar, Twitter, and email, and I don't see double digit percentages ever swapping technology for privacy. Given the choice, people will always opt for convenience.

As I mentioned, all the enacted laws imaginable would not make your iPhone completely secure. Only a fool or future convict would believe so.

[George II]

3. I was on the subway this afternoon with my wife....

....and damned if I didn't catch a guy next to me eavesdropping on our conversation!!!!

[jakeXT]

5. As long as you aren't planning anything ....

Borrowing its ideas from dystopian science fiction like Minority Report and The Hunger Games, Bill C-51 allows CSIS to arrest anyone they suspect might commit a crime, even if they haven’t done anything. They can be held for a week, which is around the amount of time Winston Smith spends in the Ministry of Love in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Canadians can also be detained for up to five years for simply “promoting” terrorism. Naturally, the bill is somewhat evasive about what that “promotion” means. Presumably it’s like pornography — CSIS knows it when it sees it. The Bill also allows those “promotional” messages to be wiped from the Internet, which means only one thing: CSIS doesn’t know how the Internet actually works. (No wonder they find it so terrifying.) If Jennifer Lawrence can’t get her nude photographs back, I can’t imagine how CSIS thinks it’s going to take down terrorist content.

http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/canadas-patriot-act-fan-fiction

[George II]

10. Relevance?

[PSPS]

6. YEAH! And don't forget Snowden's girlfriend!!11! Right?

I presume you're trying to make a joke or be funny. But this is no laughing matter, my friend. If I'm having a conversation in public with people standing around me, I would expect that someone may overhear me. But a private call made from a private place should never be coming out of a government earpiece somewhere or going into the Utah Hard Drive without a real warrant (i.e. not one of those "pretend" warrants supposedly issued at will in a joke "secret court.&quot

[frylock]

7. did he have the power to incarcerate you based upon your conversation?

[mrdmk]

17. At least you were able to catch this intrusion (if the story is true) and deal with it accordingly

According to the current rules in the name of national security, your conversations between your wife and you are fair-game.

Have a pleasant conversation

[Recursion]

8. Aren't most US phones CDMA though? (nt)

[JustAnotherGen]

15. No - LTE is driving the US towards

A SIM card environment. As well - there have been 'global ready' phones easily available since 2008 which had two chipsets . . .

One CDMA and the other GSM which enabled a CDMA based call originator to access GSM networks while in rest of world.

Where you will still see a lot of CDMA is in China and India. As the consumer class has increased in the two highest populated countries in the world - there has been a strong after market consumption of devices with CDMA technology. They too will eventually move towards a SIM driven environment - but there is still a pretty major mix.

[blackspade]

9. Old news, boxes in the garage, stripper pole.....

[George II]

11. Yeah, interesting that something that presumably happened in 2010 is "Latest Breaking News", huh?

[neverforget]

12. Don't you think that it being secret has something to do with it?

[George II]

13. Well, since this story is based on documents that Snowden stole two years ago or more....

....if they're real documents then it hasn't been a "secret" for a long time.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

16. If you don't have anything to hide.....