SIM cards expose millions of phones worldwide because they are easy to hack.

 

A flaw in the encryption technology used in some SIM cards could leave millions of cell phones exposed to easy spying , according to Karsten Nohl.

The vulnerability is said to allow attackers to send parody text messages to the device , thereby revealing the key to the standard 56-bit data encryption ( DES ). Once this key is obtained , the attacker is free to install malware on the device and has the ability to listen to phone calls , access/send messages

Text and much more in just 2 minutes.

Nearly half of all SIM cards today still rely on DES encryption , instead of the much more secure triple DES encryption. However, using this method , hackers like Nohl were able to access 25% of the SIM cards in his test, where it's estimated that 750 million phones could be affected by this vulnerability.

In early 2011, the team of Christmas He started playing with the OTA protocol and he realized that when it is used for send commands to several SIM cardsSome deny the command due to a cryptographic signature incorrect. With that signature and the use of a cryptographic method, known as rainbow tables, Christmas was able to break the encryption key in the SIM card in one minute. technical support that uses this key to program remotely a YESIt is unique to each card"Anyone who learns the key to a YES In particular, you can load any application onto the card YES that you want, including malicious code«Says Jasper Van Woudenberg, chief technology officer of North America Smart-Card security firm for clients Risk.

That is why users are being alerted, because if a malicious hacker were to intercept the SIM cards of many users , they could easily spy on calls and access important information for each user on their mobile phone.

Therefore, Nohl , a security researcher, recommends removing SIM cards with DES and using a better filter technology application to block fake messages that expose user data.