Reverse Engineering on the GMR-2 standard: Two Chinese researchers have developed a method for decrypting satellite phone communications that works almost instantly and provides real-time access to third-party secure conversations.
Their method appears to present no problems against GMR-2, the latest version of GEO-Mobile Radio Interface που χρησιμοποιείται για την υποστήριξη τηλεφωνικών δορυφορικών επικοινωνιών με εναέριους δορυφconditions.
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.
Η research of the German team described the first attack on the GMR-2 standard, but it was complex and difficult to execute in everyday life as it required time to calculate all the mathematical equations required to recover the encryption key used to secure satellite phone communications .
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.
This allowed the researchers to design an accurate system for determining the encryption key that a satellite phone uses to encrypt the 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.
