Researcher says GSM phones are vulnerable to hijack scams

Dec 28, 2011 // by RobertMiller // Blog // No Comments

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GSM is by far the most popular wireless technology, which is used by billions of people and represents about 80 percent of the global mobile market. Unfortunately According to Karsten Nohl, head of Germany’s Security Research Labs, hackers can easily gain remote control of GSM phones and instruct them to send text messages or make calls.

“We can do it to hundreds of thousands of phones in a short timeframe,” Nohl told Reuters in advance of a presentation at a hacking convention in Berlin on Tuesday.

Unfortunately consumers don’t know there’s a problem until they receive their bills.

Nohl is planning on demonstrating a new tool at the conference for ranking carriers on how good they are at protecting their customers. For example Germany’s T-Mobile and France’s SFR are the two best. Researchers reviewed 32 operators in 11 countries and rated them on how easy it was for them to intercept the calls, impersonate someone’s device, or track the device.

Consumers can go to gsmmap.org and see how well their operator is performing. The new tool will enable a dramatic growth in how many operators are sampled because it enables anyone to participate in gathering data.

Nohl went on to say, “Mobile network is by far the weakest part of the mobile ecosystem, even when compared to a lot attacked Android or iOS devices.” Most mobile carriers can easily improve their security by simply updating their software.

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