As reported by Infosecurity late last month, a research team cracked the A5/1 crypto security system on which around 80% of the world's cellular phones rely. Then just a week ago, another team of researchers similarly cracked the more advanced A5/3 encryption system, which is widely used by 3G networks and handsets around the world.
Both researchers produced large multi-terabyte sized tables that could allow hackers to decode cellular calls on-the-fly, although not in real time, Infosecurity understands.
And, says the Gold Line Group, an Israeli producer of mobile encryption software – which allows PCs to encrypt and decrypt data in real time for transmission over a cellular connection – this has resulted in sales of its cellular encryption software taking off.
Noam Copel, Gold Lock's CEO, said that the defeat of the two encryption algorithms has assured that virtually any cellular voice or data conversation is now open to monitoring and interception by hackers, thieves, spies, government agencies, or terrorists.
"This devastating one-two punch impacts over 85% of the world's cellular users", he said. "As these users realise their business and personal conversations are wide open to eavesdropping, they are quickly turning to military-grade encrypted phones as a solution", he added.
According to Copel, his firm's digital encryption software uses AES 256-bit and elliptic curve 384-bit encryption for protecting data and Diffie Hellman 4096-bit encryption for securing key transfers
Gold Lock recently drew international attention by offering $250,000 in gold and a position with the company to anyone who was able to download an encrypted telephone conversation from the company's website and provide the company with a decrypted transcript.
And says Copel, the prize remains unclaimed.
Gold Lock customers, he said, include government and civilian users with a need to have secure conversations, or transmit files and data securely, without the risk of interception by third parties.