Reverse Engineering the GMR-2 Standard: Two Chinese researchers developed a method ofencryptionof satellite telephone communications, which works almost instantly and provides access to secure third-party conversations in real time.
Their method appears to present no problem compared to GMR-2, the latter version του GEO-Mobile Radio Interface used for support telephone satellite communications with aerial satellitesconditions.
GMR-2 encrypts all data sent from the user's phone to the satellite via an 64 bit key.
The new attack on GMR-2 is much faster than the previous one
In previous research papers, the 2012 and 2013, a group of five researchers from the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, developed an attack against encryption of satellite phones using the GMR-2 standard for communications security.
The German team survey described the first attack on GMR-2, but it was complicated and difficult to run in everyday life as it took time to calculate all the mathematical equations needed to recover the encryption key used to secure its communications satellite TV.
In a paper (PDF) published two weeks ago, two Chinese researchers from the Changsha National Defense Technology University in China are describing a new attack against GMR-2 encryption, which can take place in fractions of a second, allowing an attacker to instantly obtain the encryption key .
Reverse Engineering in GMR-2 encryption
The Chinese researchers report that their method is different from the one developed by the German team. Instead of trying to execute "plain text" attacks on the encryption key using "read-collision" and "guess-and-determine" methods, the Chinese team performed reverse engineering throughout the process followed by a phone to select an encryption key.
The fact allowed researchers to design an accurate system for identifying the encryption key used by a satellite phone to encrypt its data by examining the already encrypted data sent by the phone.
Although we are currently talking about academic and scientific success, this research can have disastrous results, as this new attack could be used to monitor satellite telephone communications.
Satellite telephones are vital equipment, often used in wars, by secret agents, activists, dissidents, and many others.
