Company Makes Inconspicuous Secure Cellphone 328
dponce80 writes "With concerns over privacy at an all-time high, it's refreshing to hear that Swiss company VectroTel is making a secure mobile phone. The X8 encrypts secure calls (the unit is also able to make regular calls) with a virtually unbreakable 128-bit key, itself generated through a Diffie-Hellman exchange. While transmission does get somewhat delayed, communication is secure."
What does this mean for eavesdropping? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What does this mean for eavesdropping? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What does this mean for eavesdropping? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just in case the parent was not tongue in cheek:
Is it only myself for whom liberty from large entities (like the Goverment) is worth purchasing with a risk? Didn't many brave souls die for this in the past and continue to
Re:What does this mean for eavesdropping? (Score:5, Insightful)
would you be happy then if the "government" listened in on your phonecalls with your lawyer? or your tax attorney? or your doctor? or your psychiatrist? or your stockbroker? or your mistress? or your wife? or your election campaign manager? or any of a myriad of things you would rather not get out into public or potentially be used against you?
Re:What does this mean for eavesdropping? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, live a good clean life, ignore outside influences, pay your taxes on time and you will have little to worry about; Like me :)
In other words, be completely boring, never upset the status quo, never fail to kow-tow to any government officials you meet (just in case) and be insignificant enough to escape notice and you're fine. Yeah, great plan. You'd do just fine as a serf in medieval europe too.
Who cares if the lord can fuck you in the ass whenever they want, so long as you are ugly and unimportant they won't bother.
Re:What does this mean for eavesdropping? (Score:2)
Re:What does this mean for eavesdropping? (Score:2)
Re:What does this mean for eavesdropping? (Score:2)
So the best defense against surveillance is to be boring?
Re:What does this mean for eavesdropping? (Score:4, Insightful)
That gets flagged as a potential terrorist conversation.
Since he's talking to you at the time, you both get investigated.
They find out that that one weird cousion of yours recently travelled to Italy, and by concidence a known terrorist contact was also in Italy.
You now look like the perfect cover, and warrant a REAL investigation... ie, asking your neighbors and employer questions.
Since they've been asked, and "they wouldn't be asking if there wasn't something to worry about", you are now suspected by your neighbors.
So, they've talked to you boss as well, who recalls that you were late coming back from lunch awhile back. (You're wife's prenatal checkup ran a little long) That story checks with the gov't, but they, naturally, never call your boss back to tell him.. so he's now a little suspicious.
You can't guarantee none of this could ever happen. (And you know the old byline... with the government, any possible abuse is a guaranteed abuse at some point. Do you want to be THAT guy?)
However, if they didn't pick up on the original conversation, that completely removes the most probable vector for something like this happening.
Can you hear me now?? (Score:5, Funny)
NSA analyst: No
Re:Can you hear me now?? (Score:2)
NSA analyst: No*
* Which in NSA speak means, yes... most definitely. We've got a satellites, crypto breaking computers you've never even dreamed of, listening devices, and backdoors in the hardware. The hardest thing for us NSA analysts to do is to decide which source we want to listen from. Of course we're not going to tell YOU any of this. So No, can't hear you... keep on talkin'.
Re:Can you hear me now?? (Score:2)
Re:Can you hear me now?? (Score:2)
* They don't realize they're there (either in components or sabotage)
* The company is really a front/puppet of the NSA
* Blackmail or extortion
Re:Can you hear me now?? (Score:2)
Another Swiss manufacturer of encryption equipment, Crypto AG, has a less-than-stellar history in this regard.
I Googled them and this was the first link that I found: Crypto AG: The NSA's Trojan Whore? [mediafilter.org]. (Site may be down, I used the Google cache.) A little tinfoil-hattish, but I don't think
Re:Can you hear me now?? (Score:3, Interesting)
2^61 / 2^59 = 2^2 hours or 4 hours to crack 128 bit inscription.
Something's not right...
PS: Now this is a vary low ball estimate. I was just pointing out that they could crack 128 bit encryption. However, if you use 2 * 128 bit primes to make a 256 bit key your probably safe, unless they found new math to make cracking such key's easy.
Ah. I see the problem. You're confusing public key encryption and single-key encryption.
Re:Can you hear me now?? (Score:2)
The main disadvantage of OTPs, and the reason why everyoe is not
That's a book cipher, not OTP. (Score:2)
While using a commercial CD might seem to offer a high-level of security, it's a substantially reduced keyspace from using 600MB of random bits.
Re:That's a book cipher, not OTP. (Score:2)
Re:Can you hear me now?? (Score:2)
Re:Can you hear me now?? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's unlikely they could. Assuming the key exchange works properly, and assuming they're using a known good algorithm (such as Rjindael aka AES), the NSA has no shot. Assume they use AES. Default is 128 bits and 10 rounds. Then the following little blurb from Apple's website applies:
AES gives you 3.4 x 10^38 possible 128-bit keys. In comparison, the Digital Encryption Standard (DES) keys are a mere 56 bits long, which means there are approximately 7.2 x 10^16 possible DES keys. Thus, there are on the order of 10^21 times more possible AES 128-bit keys than DES 56-bit keys. Assuming that one could build a machine that could recover a DES key in a second, it would take that machine approximately 149 trillion years to crack a 128-bit AES key.
(To put that into perspective, the universe is believed to be less than 20 billion years old.)
Now, that assumes you can crack a DES key in a second. The fastest successful crack by Deep Crack [wikipedia.org] was just shy of 24 hours, or, 86400 seconds.
Re:Can you hear me now?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously.
If he truly hadn't heard the Verizon guy, he wouldn't have answered anything at all, hehe.
Re:Can you hear me now?? (Score:2)
-nB
Re:What does this mean for eavesdropping? (Score:2)
Re:What does this mean for eavesdropping? (Score:2)
How do you think you establish a shared secret? Here's how Diffie Hellman works in short.
Consider some generator g for some group in Z* mod p, where p is prime and g and p are public knowledge.
Bob calculates g^a (mod p), where a is a random integer, sends it to Alice.
Alice calculates g^b (mod p), where b is a random integer, sends it to Bob.
Bob calculates (g^b)^a
Re:Google for Swiss + Cryptogate (Score:2)
This sounds like a really good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This sounds like a really good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm willing to defend my freedom to death. If necessary, against my government.
And I bet, the US founding fathers would be proud of me.
Re:This sounds like a really good idea (Score:2)
Many of the founders of the U.S. believed that freedom is only possible if the government is more afraid
Re:This sounds like a really good idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This sounds like a really good idea (Score:2)
Re:This sounds like a really good idea (Score:2)
(No comments from bondage lovers, please...)
Everyone has their own set of ideals. Everyone has their values. Everyone has their priorities. Yours might be your life. Mine is my freedom.
Re:This sounds like a really good idea (Score:2)
Re:This sounds like a really good idea (Score:2)
Re:This sounds like a really good idea (Score:2)
But this doesn't help, say, non-US businesses competing with large US corporations who are (rightly) worried they might be targeted for espionage by dodgy govenment agencies for economic/political reasons. (I'm sure the US isn't the only country which does this either...)
Re:This sounds like a really good idea (Score:2)
To avoid that problem, check-out 'steganography'. You hide your messages inside a binary such as a JPEG file. The changes are minute, and the JPEG not only looks normal, but unless the interceptors know the keys and software used, there isn't really any way to detect whether there is hidden content or not. No extra scrutiny.
Note: if you use kiddie-porn as your JPEG, the encrypted content will be the least o
Virtually unbreakable? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Virtually unbreakable? (Score:2, Interesting)
The only way to have true security is to cache the public key of the other party on first call (a la ssh), or better, to have the phones exchange keys through IR when they are placed one next to the other.
Useless (Score:4, Funny)
This is of course useless for phone sex.
Me: "So, what are you wearing?"
Gf: "..."
Me: "What are you wea*"
Gf: "A hot small negli*"
Me: "Sorry, please continue"
(...)
Gf: "A hot small neglige and nothing else"
Me: "*grunt* and then?"
(...)
Gf: "I didn't hear you. What did you say after then?"
Me: "Uh nothing, I was just asking, what do*"
Gf: "Is this thing on? Oh wait now I hear you. Can you repeat?"
Et cetera.
Re:Useless (Score:2)
(And, er, I'm talking about the broken-up audio, not the conversation topic.)
Re:Useless (Score:2)
Re:Useless (Score:2, Funny)
GF calls.
GF: Hi, could you..
BF: Wait! Read the hash to me on the screen.
GF: but..
BF: someone might be doing a man-in-the-middle attack. just read the hash.
GF: *sigh* [reads long string of numbers]
BF: 8? did you say 8? not A?
GF: No. AAY! Like APPLE.
BF: Oh, phew.
GF: *sigh*
GF: now, could you pick up some milk?
BF: okay.
GF: *sigh* bye.
unbreakable? (Score:4, Interesting)
isn't WEP also 128 bit?
Re:unbreakable? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:unbreakable? (Score:2)
Re:unbreakable? (Score:2)
If that's wrong, help a brother out and clear that up.
Re:unbreakable? (Score:2)
Re:unbreakable? (Score:2)
Feasibility for US Market? (Score:4, Insightful)
Since this cellphone is made in Switzerland, a country that presumably has differing cell phone communication standards than the US does, is it possible to buy and use this cellphone in the US with a normal US carrier? Or would we have to wait and hope for a company to build something similar for the US?
Thanks, and sorry for the ignorance.
Re:Feasibility for US Market? (Score:2)
Re:Feasibility for US Market? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think so, at least one of their phones [vectrotel.ch]. That one uses the three bands 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz. The former two is used in europe (during a call the phones switches frequency bands depending on which one gives the best connection, or something similar), while the latter is used in USA (among other places, I think). That indicates that it is possible to use it in the states too.
Re:Feasibility for US Market? (Score:5, Informative)
A phone connected to a base station will always us one or the other band. But within each band there are several channels; the phone and base station automatically select the best channel continuously throughout a call {if another subscriber disconnects and the channel they were using is better, your conversation will switch to that channel}. The whole process is kept seamless because both phone and base station change at the same time, between data packets.
Re:Feasibility for US Market? (Score:2)
In Denmark several providers have both 900MHz and 1800MHz in service. 900MHz is used to provide coverage in sparsely-populated areas, and 1800MHz is used to provide capacity in dense areas.
Re:Feasibility for US Market? (Score:2)
Re:Feasibility for US Market? (Score:2)
What about authentication? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not saying it's necessarily snake oil, but the lack of any details certainly doesn't inspire any confidence.
Re:What about authentication? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What about authentication? (Score:2)
Re:What about authentication? (Score:3, Informative)
Funny guy.
Just in case you were serious, a MIM attack against this phone would tap in the data path with 0 delay, there is no need for an actual "man" in the middle. Eve makes the key agreement with both Alice and Bob (different keys), and then decrypts and re-encrypts the data stream on the fly.
Re:What about authentication? (Score:2)
Re:What about authentication? (Score:5, Informative)
All clear now? Well, this is how it might work in practice, with a malicious interloper we'll call Mallory:
Alice tries to call Bob. Mallory intercepts the call, pretending to be Bob; gets the key Alice sends, and in return sends her a key {which Alice thinks is from Bob}. A fraction of a split second later Mallory places a call to Bob, pretending to be Alice, and sends Bob a key. Bob thinks Mallory's key is really Alice's key and sends a key to "Alice". Whatever Alice says is encrypted against the key sent to her by Mallory, who -- having the opposite key -- can decrypt it, re-encrypt it against the key which Bob has, and send it on to Bob. Mallory has a nice, fast computer that can do decryption and re-encryption in real time; in reality, it only has to be twice as fast as the processor in either of their telephones. Whatever Bob says is encrypted against a key sent to him by Mallory, who can decrypt it and re-encrypt it against Alice's key. Mallory has both sides of the conversation, in the clear, and neither Alice nor Bob are any the wiser.
Re:What about authentication? (Score:2)
Alice sends a message to Bob, encrypted against some key; only Alice knows the decryption key. Bob encrypts the same message against a key of his own and sends it back to Alice, doubly encrypted against both Alice's and Bob's keys. Alice decrypts the message with her decryption key, leaving it still encrypted against Bob's key, and sends it back to Bob. Bob decrypts it with his decrypting key and now has the message
Re:What about authentication? (Score:3, Informative)
The crucial requirement is that you can verify your partner's identity regardless of the security (or lack thereof) of the current conversation. Recognizing something unforgeable about them will do it: their voice, in this case.
This works because, in order to establish communications at all, each party has to split a secret:
AB' <—> A'B
A' being the public part of Alice's one-time key, B' Bob's. AB' can be used to generate the same key as A'B: each end is u
Re:What about authentication? (Score:2, Interesting)
it doesn't tell you who you are talking to. GSM calls are never point to point, so there is always a "man in the middle".
ah, but this point [philzimmermann.com] was made well with Zimmerman's Zfone [philzimmermann.com] - you do the authentication yourself by having a conversation with the person on the other end and determining if he is the person he claims he is. Relying on complex certificate authorities and key management schemes makes most secure communications systems unfeasable - the old usability vs. security paradox.
Additional securit
Man in the middle (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm more worried about the proprietry algorithm for the encryption, and how it's implemented. Any conspiracy theorists will still think there's a back door for the government (or swiss secret service?) to listen in.
Anyone with anything really important to say would use GPG on an MP3 and maybe a lashing of stenography on top.
Re:Man in the middle (Score:2)
Anyone who wants to know what you are saying badly enough will simply bug the handset and capture the voice going in and the sound coming out. Ye olde analogue hole.
This sort of bugging has already been done with existing mobile phones so this new variant of handset is unlikely to present any challenge at all.
Re:Man in the middle (Score:2)
Why not get one from cryptophone.de? (Score:5, Informative)
They employ some of the smartest crypto people, use well-known algorithms and publish their sources so you can check them yourself.
Some points... (Score:5, Informative)
Some points;
- 128 bit keys are probably good enough, depending on the nature of the conversation. Diffiehellman generates a per-session master secret. To this you would then apply a KDF ( Key Derivation Function ) in order to produce your session key for use with your symmetric cipher, most likely AES or 3DES, maybe even TwoFish. A new master secret is generated every time you make a call, hence the session key changes per call, this is UNLIKE your WEP key, which is constant or one value selected from a set. The consequence of this is that although it is practical to break an 128 bit symmetric key, it is NOT practical to do so in the time interval in which the call is taking place. Hence the encryption applied is strong enough for protecting calls in the short term, although if someone captured the call they could possibly decrypt it at a later date.
- GSM does feature limited cryptography. Unfortunately, and rather amusingly this encrypting is only carried out on radio traffic. Once the data reaches the base station / cell, it is sent in the clear around the cable cellular netork's backbone infrastructure.
Re:Some points... (Score:2)
If only a few people are using this, the low volume of encrypted calls makes capture and offline analysis feasable. Only when encrypted calls are the norm will th
Its a good as your surroundings (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its a good as your surroundings (Score:2)
About 5 years ago, I was walking back to the station having been at an IT conference and exhibition in Manchester (UK) and learned from the guy ahead of me (who was on his phone and talking to a colleague beside hin too) that a major UK system reseller was about to go bust. Teh two ahead of me were discussing whether it would be worth making a bid for the liquidated company.
Mind you, I also once sat opposite a lawyer on a train who had case notes and witness statements spread across the table - inte
Re:Its a good as your surroundings (Score:2)
Re:Its a good as your surroundings (Score:2)
I wouldn't call it eavesdropping, exactly. It's more like forgetting to bring earplugs with you. Some of the people on my bus talk loud enough for the whole bus to hear, and they talk to absolute strangers about the most personal stuff.
That's just to the person sitting beside them. When they're on their cellphone, they literally shout so the person on the other end can hear them. (Well, that other person is pretty far away, right?)
Big question is (Score:3, Funny)
Sectra Tiger (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.army-technology.com/contractors/naviga
Re:Norwegian, not Swedish! (Score:2)
Sectra Communications AB
Teknikringen 20
SE-583 30 Linköping
Sweden
URL: www.sectra.se
Also: "The NSK 200 system is based on the Sectra Tiger platform. Sectra developed the NSK 200 system in close cooperation with the Norwegian defense."
Regular-use crypto (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a parallel problem with GPG or the like. Since very few people have or want to use it, sending unencrypted e-mail is the only way to communicate with most of the world.
This phone is worse than that, though, since I can download GPG/cyrpto-software-of-your-choice and even install it for someone and show them how to use it -- but I'd have to persuade them to spend money on new hardware (and then convince them to actually use it with the crypto on!) in order to use the features of this phone.
Apathy/Laziness: 1
Discerning Citizens: 0
Re: (Score:2)
President Logan must have one of these (Score:2, Funny)
Too bad it didn't protect him against his wife's secretary using a $30 digital recorder from Radio Shack to tape a conversation incriminating him in the assassination of a former president, but then, *everybody* was having a bad day.
How about backdoors (Score:5, Interesting)
The interesting (not to mention relevant) detail here is that they (the Europeans) where using a supposedly safe mobile phone (made by a Swiss company i believe) which turned out to have a backdoor that allowed NSA to decrypt the calls.
Why should we expect these guys to be any more honest than those other ones where (assuming they're actually not the same ones)?
As i see it, the best way to make sure you have a backdoor free safe phone is to have a generic open-mobile solution, a bit like a mini-PC but for a mobile phone, with an open communications API that allows development and deployment on such a mobile of software which provides the safe communications.
As long as the encryption layer is implemented by the provider and cannot be checked by any independent 3rd party, there is no guarantee whatsoever that it ain't filled with backdoors/weaknesses put there on purpose to allow the sig-int agencies (of one or more countries) to be able to spy on calls made via those mobile phones.
Re:How about backdoors (Score:2)
1: Never trust proprietary code which you can't audit.
2: The device must be common.
Sounds like a perfect fit for some B-flat handset and an open development environment.
Sort of like Nokia meets OpenBSD.
Someone wake me up when this happens; I'd be glad to contribute.
Easy to defeat (Score:2)
If somebody wants to know what you are saying, they just bug the handset. They have to really want to listen pretty badly and come up with a way to get the phone long enough to mod it, but it can be done, has been done, and been used against assorted targets around the world.
As long as people have to speak into the phone and hear sound from the earpiece, there will
Re:Easy to defeat (Score:2)
I think the point many are trying to make is that if the authorities have a good enough reason to want to see what someone is up to, then they should be able to find out, after getting a warrant, etc, but what many are unhappy about is the thought that everyone is constantly monitored regardless of whether or not there is any evidence to suspect wrongdoing.
This being the case, cell phones that encrypt would hopefully stop the gener
Convenience (Score:2)
Concerns over privacy at all time high? (Score:3, Funny)
unbreakable? (Score:2)
for now... quantum computing promises the ability to break these virtually unbreakable keys while i'm getting a cup of coffee. if it can be made, it can be broken. it's a universal truth. if we can't break it now, we'll be able to break it later - and you better believe the NSA will be able to break it before you know they can.
Can some phone-geek clear something up please? (Score:2)
a) Alice calls Bob
+ results in a SS7 data message sent accross the PSN (publicly switched network - aka. legacy phone excahnges) to establish a ring on Bob's set.
+ If they're both cell phone users, then there is additional routing accross each users' cellphone networks.
b) Bob answers the call and talks with Alice
+ Cell phones often use u-law [wikipedia.org] for voice/data compression. The PSN transmit
Re:need to ask Bruce on this one.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:need to ask Bruce on this one.. (Score:2)
Having an encrypted phone line sounds a bit like overkill if you leave
Re:need to ask Bruce on this one.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Are people really this paranoid? (Score:2)
Re:Are people really this paranoid? (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason to encrypt is not to make it impossible for investigators to hear you -- because, as you said, they can bug you in some other way. The reason is to make it impractical to do widespread monitoring of innocent people. When all calls are encrypted, investigators have to do a little actual work to bug a call, so it's impossible to instantly tap all the innocent callers as they'd like.
And if you've been following current
Re:Are people really this paranoid? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's far, far easier for the government to bug all the phone lines (as they're currently doing, I might add) at a central point, and then plug in to someone's conversations at will. If you're using an encrypted phone, then Echelon / Carnivore / AT&T / Dubya's Latest Secret Illegal Wiretap can't listen in. The government have to break in to your house, take a screwdriver to your phone and physically bug the thing.
Can the government spy on everybody by bugging the telephone exchange? Yes, easily, and they're doing just that. Can the government spy on everybody by secretly bugging every last individual phone? No, it would be prohibitively expensive. Have the NSA burgle every single house individually and fiddle every single phone? Impossible.
Encrypting phone calls makes it enormously more expensive and difficult for the government to spy on you. That's got to be a good thing.
What the point is (Score:2)
Regular GSM is encrypted, as you say, although weakly. The GSM encryption encrypts the link from phone to cell tower. This will, in no way, prevent a government wiretap or telco employee with greased palms from intercepting your call after it has been decrypted and put on the network.
This, on the other hand, provides end-to-end encryption, and stronger encryption at that.
Re:Cryptography? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cryptography? (Score:2)
Or, as it turns out, a reporter with confidential sources, or anyone in general who is opposed to current government policy.
Re:PCS (Score:2)
Calls are only secure "over-the-air". This keeps people from scanners from hearing your call (as they could with analog) and, as you stated, harder to clone. If the government really wanted to monitor your calls, they'd do it at the switch level, when your call is simply an audio bitstream running over fiber or copper. I think most (all?) cellular carriers have had easy-to-use eavesdropping functionality in place for government use for the last few years.
They can also triangulate your p
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Honeypot? (Score:2)