Protection?Why?

The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is the most widely used cellular technology in the world. For GSM, like many other widely used systems, security is crucial.

Many of the very valuable aspects of GSM can be attacked. Anonymity, authentication mechanism and confidentiality can be attacked and compromised if the attacker possesses the right equipment. In order to break the protection, the attacker needs to utilise active attacks, i e base station functionality is needed. However, if the attacker is able to decrypt GSM traffic, i e break A5/1 and A5/2, passive attacks are sufficient.

The cryptographic algorithms used to encrypt GSM traffic and data are cryptographically weak and can be cryptanalysed in real-time, resulting in compromised confidentiality.

GSM does not provide sufficient security for users with very valuable information to communicate. These users are advised to use an additional layer of security on top of GSM.

Besides the threats in voice communication also data protection bacomes more and more important for companies, state authoriteis but also for the private people - data theaft is considered to be the world´s fastest growing crime.