From: Christopher E Stefan <flatline@u.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 19:13:11 PST
To: Arsen Ray Arachelian <rarachel@prism.poly.edu>
Subject: Re: cel fraud
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.05.9501220348.A21277-c100000@prism.poly.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.A32.3.91c.950131190213.57680H-100000@mead1.u.washington.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Sun, 22 Jan 1995, Arsen Ray Arachelian wrote:

> Oh brother, here we go again.  Now the bandits are not only going to listen in
> for the serial numbers of the phone, but they'll listen in for (what?) touch
> tones of the block out numbers passwords?

The celluar companies "solution" to this problem for AMPS phones is 
laughable.

> If only these guys would wake up and use strong crypto...  This is a perfect
> example of a government caused fucked up on a grand scale due to the fact that
> we now have an installed base of millions of insecure cell phones and cell
> stations.   It's probably not too late for the cell companies to start
> introducing crypto cell phones, but the longer they wait, the harder the switch,
> and what's worse is that they've taken the attitude that "So what if we loose
> millions, we'll just raise the prices and get it all back anyway."

My understanding is CDMA based digital celluar go a long way toward 
this.  CDMA uses direct-sequence spread-spectrum based transmission, 
should keep everyone but the TLA's out.

> You certainly won't find me sporting a cell phone until we get something a bit
> more secure.  :-I  At least the beeper black market isn't as vicious...

Consider getting digital celluar service.  The current widely deployed 
digital celluar standard, TDMA, is less secure than CDMA above, but is 
more than enough to keep 99% of the cell bandits out.  CDMA should be 
available from USwest and Pacific Telesis (possibly others) by the end 
of the year.

-- 
Christopher E Stefan  *  flatline@u.washington.edu  *  PGP 2.6ui key by request