Making the case for smart cards for the average user

[Peter Lebbing]

On 15/03/15 23:24, Jose Castillo wrote:
> I think it’s encouraging, in a perverse way, to hear that when GCHQ
> sought to compromise SIM card encryption keys [4], they had to resort
> to spying on the employees generating them.

Perhaps the SIM cards are relatively well protected from remote access;
the session keys for GSM communication are not. IIRC, it requires an
on-line attack and would leave traces as soon as GSM network operators
started looking for such attacks, so it's less sneaky. But there were
two interesting talks on the subject at the 31C3:

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6249_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201412271715_-_ss7_locate_track_manipulate_-_tobias_engel.html#video

http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6122_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201412271830_-_mobile_self-defense_-_karsten_nohl.html#video

Apparently GCHQ still wanted the SIM keys, though :).

Peter.

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