Sigillu - Secure Communications

Smartphone security is heading for ‘apocalypse’

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 01:10:53 +0000

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This idea is known as the “baseband apocalypse,” and it is nothing new. At last year’s Black Hat DC Conference, security researcher Ralf-Philipp Weinmann presented the vulnerabilityand warned that new open source tools for establishing mobile base stations will make smartphones easier to exploit than in the past, when the code for base stations was retained by the service providers that managed them.

What’s scarier, though, is that smartphone developers since have focused on features like user interface and screen resolution, as opposed to fixing a fundamental vulnerability that has been public knowledge for at least the past 16 months, Auerbach says. The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) standard for 3G cellphones still employs the A5/1 encryption algorithm, which Auerbach says is “incredibly broken” and “basically worthless.” Indeed, the industry has been aware of an attack against A5/1 that can intercept voice and text communications since 2009.

“So, in light of that, controlling the base station and the network elements really does give you access to users’ communications,” Auerbach says.

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Link

India gets Israeli tech to scan BlackBerry data

admin — Mon, 07 May 2012 02:50:23 +0000

Israel has agreed to arm India with cryptography and crypto-analysis know-how that will allow security establishment to intercept encrypted or coded messages and data transfers done through dedicated networks.

As a first step, Tel Aviv-based RSA, part of technology major and multi-billion EMC proposes to set up a base in India to develop specialised solutions to enable Indian security agencies access to encrypted or coded messages.
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http://www.mydigitalfc.com/knowledge/india-gets-israeli-tech-scan-blackberry-data-055

Gold Lock PBX (Spanish)

admin — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:01:52 +0000

Sweden Paradise Lost – Part 1: General Wiretapping

admin — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 02:02:21 +0000

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at any time, and for no other cause than it wanting to do so, the Swedish Government can and will wiretap all your communications. They do so in bulk, and are restricted – if that is the appropriate word – to wiretapping no more than about two million households at a time.

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Link

These Are The Prices AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Charge For Cellphone Wiretaps

admin — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 01:48:41 +0000

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Earlier this week the American Civil Liberties Union revealed a trove of documents it had obtained through Freedom of Information Requests to more than 200 police departments around the country. They show a pattern of police tracking cell phone locations and gathering other data like call logs without warrants, using devices that impersonate cell towers to intercept cellular signals, and encouraging officers to refrain from speaking about cell-tracking technology to the public, all detailed in a New York Times story.

But at least one document also details the day-to-day business of telecoms’ handing over of data to law enforcement, including a breakdown of every major carrier’s fees for every sort of data request from targeted wiretaps to so-called “tower dumps” that provide information on every user of certain cell tower. The guide, as provided by the Tucson, Arizona police department to the ACLU, is dated July 2009, and the fees it lists may be somewhat outdated.

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Link

Gold Lock Secure Switch (English)

admin — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 23:14:52 +0000

Gold Lock 3G (Spanish)

admin — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 23:10:10 +0000

Gold Lock Secure Switch (Spanish)

admin — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 23:05:21 +0000

Wiretaps signal that Mexico’s election season has begun

admin — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 01:50:25 +0000

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“All people who today complain of (wiretaps) have used these illegally taped conversations themselves to deal blows to their adversaries,” he said.

He said many larger state governments had the capacity to wiretap telephones, as did the federal government, making it difficult to trace the source of the bugging and putting potential recordings in the hands of politicians of all stripes.

The leaking of an apparent telephone conversation of National Action Party candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota came more than two months after microphones were found scattered in the lower house of Congress in what lawmaker Armando Rios Piter said were “quite a lot of offices.”

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Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/29/3522917/wiretaps-signal-that-mexicos-election.html#storylink=cpy

Mexican candidate accuses rivals of wiretapping

admin — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 01:53:29 +0000

MEXICO CITY—The campaign of conservative presidential candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota charged Tuesday that the rival Institutional Revolutionary Party makes regular use of wiretaps, like the one in which she is purportedly heard accusing Mexico’s top cop of spying on her.

Vazquez Mota’s campaign said in a statement that prosecutors should make a joint investigation of her case as well as of past similar wiretaps against politicians from other parties, including a dissident member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

The statement suggested the PRI may have been behind the wiretaps. PRI’s presidential candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto, leads in polls on the July elections.

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Link