Moore's Law leaves mobile networks ripe for attack
The GSM mobile standard is wide open for attack, experts have warned, thanks in part to the increasing amount of computing power available to hackers.
"Voice interception capability really depends on how much processing power you have," said Aaron Turner, cofounder of security specialists N4struct, speaking at the RSA 2012 conference in San Francisco. "But that's just a function of Moore's Law – the faster computers get, the more data they can handle."
In their presentation at RSA 2012, Turner and cofounder of Arbor Networks Rob Malan detailed how easy it is to break into mobile phones, either to slurp data, monitor voice calls, spam users, or turn the device into a bugging station. GSM code is incredibly brittle, Malan explained, mainly due to lack of oversight in the standards, and ever-increasing computing power is making phone hacking more commonplace.
