1310, 2011

Mobile Phone Calls as Security Risk

René Pfeiffer/ October 13, 2011/ Conference, Security

Do you rely on your mobile phone? Do you frequently call someone or get called? Do you transmit messages or data across mobile phone networks? Maybe you shouldn’t unless you use additional security layers since mobile phone networks must be regarded as a security risk. Karsten Nohl of Security Research Labs has taken a look at Austrian mobile networks. The result is a wake-up call for companies and individuals alike. According to Nohl the local Austrian providers A1/Mobilkom, T-Mobile Österreich und Orange have not updated their networks as other operators in Europe have already. He explained that there is no sign of any additional hardening. The transmissions of mobile phone network clients can be intercepted and decrypted with very little technical effort. The networks still use the A5/1 encryption standard which has been repeatedly

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0610, 2011

Of Web Apps, Smartphones and Data Leaks

René Pfeiffer/ October 6, 2011/ High Entropy

Just digging through the backlog of the past days. Someone shot me a quick link to a web site showing an administrative interface. I failed to see the significance right away, because the link was sent by chat with an URL obfuscator shortener. I know discovered the corresponding blog post to this issue. Coincidentally I was talking on the phone today about AnonAustria’s latest publications. Apparently they found the addresses of Austrian police staff online. The claim is that the data was sitting on a web server and could be downloaded simply by guessing links. Yesterday the Austrian Chamber of Commerce confirmed a data leak covering more than 6.000 data sets of customers (400 of them complete with bank accounting information). The data leak looks like a web server „glitch“, too. AnonAustria referred to

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1909, 2011

Talk: Windows Pwn 7 OEM – Owned Every Mobile?

René Pfeiffer/ September 19, 2011/ Conference

Windows Phone is an operating system for mobile phones. Similar to other operating systems it has security features such as sandboxing applications, APIs for exchanging data across applications and isolation of storage built in. It also offer methods for encrypting data on the phone itself. There’s more documentation out in the Internet or directly available at Microsoft’s web site. So, this is good, right? In theory, yes. In practice currently very little public information is available about Windows Phone 7 OS security preventing adequate determination of the risk exposed by WP7 devices. This does not refer to the documentation. It’s all about assessing risks, and risk assessment can’t be done by looking at APIs. Alex Plaskett will talk about WP7 security in-depth. He will address the ever increasing challenges and stages of exploitation an

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1009, 2011

Workshop: Attacks on GSM Networks

René Pfeiffer/ September 10, 2011/ Conference

The topic of GSM networks has been discussed at past DeepSec conferences right from the very first event in 2007. Recent years saw a significant increase of research in GSM attacks: The weaknesses of A5/1 encryption have been demonstrated and exploited, several GPRS networks in Europe have been shown to be insecure, and an ever-growing number of Open Source projects in the area of GSM and GPRS are gaining significant attraction. Despite the availability of attack methods, the tools are often hard to use for security professionals due to their limited documentation. The published attacks are often difficult to reimplement when assessing the vulnerability of GSM networks. This is exactly why DeepSec 2011 offers a two-day training on attacking GSM networks. Attendees will spend about half the time re-visiting the key aspects of GSM’s

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0809, 2011

Talk: SMS Fuzzing – SIM Toolkit Attack

René Pfeiffer/ September 8, 2011/ Conference

We’re pretty sure that you own a mobile phone and that you send and receive text messages. Do you feel at risk or somehow threatened? If not, then you might want to reconsider your opinion. Cell phones, no matter if dumb or smart, are always connected to the mobile phone network. This means that they can receive messages and commands from the network. The security of GSM has already been explored in past DeepSec conferences. There’s a chance that you are prone to attacks. Let’s stick to text messages. At DeepSec 2011 we will show how to make a phone send an SMS message without the user’s consent and how to make the phone not to receive any message. The method used works on any phone, no matter if it’s a smartphone or not

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2005, 2011

Mobile Network Security revisited at the Linuxwochen

René Pfeiffer/ May 20, 2011/ Veranstaltung

Tomorrow we will present a review talk about the state of mobile network security. The talk will be held at the Linuxwochen in Eisenstadt. We will address results discussed in the past DeepSec conferences (including work of Karsten Nohl, Harald Welte, David A. Burgess, Sylvain Munaut, Dieter Spaar, Ralph-Philipp Weinmann and others). If you understand German we recommend listening to Chaosradio Express #179 where Karsten explain to Tim Pritlove the state of GSM security over a period of 130 minutes. Slides of our talk will be available after the Linuxwochen. Update: You can download the slides here. There’s a simple audio recording available as well (MP3 or OGG).

0205, 2011

DeepSec 2011 Focus: Mobile Computing and Communications

René Pfeiffer/ May 2, 2011/ Conference

Our Call for Papers announcement mentioned seven topics that we are focussing on. We’d like to explain what these topics are all about in a couple of blog postings since it is not easy to squeeze everything into a few lines. We begin with mobile computing and communication. Mobile computing incorporates mobile computing devices such as smart phones, tablets, cell phones, laptops, netbooks, wrist watches, navigation devices and similar computers. Most of us are now accustomed to frequently use portable computing. We want to know what bugs and security risks we carry around. A lot of users regard these mobile computers as appliance, therefore the thought of upgrading or fixing software on them is less widespread. You don’t do firmware upgrades on your microwave oven or water boiler, do you? Maybe you should. Mobile

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