Security researchers Karsten Nohl and Chris Paget presented their findings in a presentation (WMV video) Monday at the 26th Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) in Berlin. A practical demonstration of the vulnerabilities and potential exploits is scheduled to take place at the conference on Wednesday at 12:00 GMT.
The demonstration is a follow-up to a presentation the two researchers made in August at the Hacking At Random conference, during which they outlined serious flaws in the GSM encryption scheme.
GSM is used in approximately 80 percent of the world's mobile communications systems, and in about 3 billion cell phones across the globe, according to industry estimates. In his CCC presentation yesterday, Nohl pointed out that much data has already been published about GSM's vulnerabilities, but the pair's new research takes it one step further -- by showing how GSM calls can be intercepted and decoded using relatively low-cost hardware and open-source software that is readily available on the Web.
Organizations should assume that within six months of the demo GSM phone calls will be at risk, says Stan Schatt, vice president and practice director for healthcare and security at ABI Research.
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