[14121] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Code breakers crack GSM cellphone encryption
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Wagner)
Tue Sep 9 13:43:34 2003
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From: daw@mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2003 17:14:21 +0000 (UTC)
Reply-To: daw@cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
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Vin McLellan wrote:
>A5/2 was the equivalent of 40-bit DES, presumed to be relatively weak and
>developed as an export standard.
Yeah. Except it would be more accurate to place A5/2's strength as
roughly equivalent to 17-bit DES. A5/1's strength is roughly equivalent
to that of 40-bit DES.
Of course, the GSM folks didn't exactly do a great job of disclosing
these facts. They did disclose that A5/2 was the exportable version.
However, when A5/2 was first designed, SAGE put out a report that claimed
years of security analysis on A5/2 had been done and no mathematical
weaknesses had been found. Now that we've seen A5/2, that report suffers
from a certain credibility gap, to put it mildly...
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