Is it possible to use a common phone to sniff the GSM traffic? Or something like a GNU-radio capable external device is absolutely required?<p>GSM and GSM security are interesting topics but really hard to touch with your hands because of the difficulty of reading what's passing over the air. The more hackers will have access to equipments, the more secure will be our conversations in the long run.
I dont know much about GSM protocols. Can somebody here explain what might be possible applications for this thing? Would it be possible to decode recorded GMS calls around you? Is it significant vulnerability?
From last year's Chaos event:<p><a href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/events/3654.en.html" rel="nofollow">http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/events/3654.en.h...</a><p><i>"From the total lack of network to handset authentication, to the "Of course I'll give you my IMSI" message, to the iPhone that really wanted to talk to us. It all came as a surprise -- stunning to see what $1500 of USRP can do. Add a weak cipher trivially breakable after a few months of distributed table generation and you get the most widely deployed privacy threat on the planet."</i>