Back to RadioPhoneDigital Phone Encryption Cracked

Well here it is pholks -- you knew deep in your hearts that it was vulnerable, but now some experts have shown the world exactly how much so. You didn't think that the NSA would actually let us have secure phones did you? No such luck. Believe me, GSM isn't much better. Get your own encryption system if you want privacy. --DR. WHO 20.03.1997

Cryptanalysis of the Cellular Message Encryption Algorithm

ABSTRACT: This paper analyzes the Telecommunications Industry Association's Cellular Message Encryption Algorithm (CMEA), which is used for confidentiality of the control channel in the most recent American digital cellular telephony systems. We describe an attack on CMEA which requires 40--80 known plaintexts, has time complexity about 2^24--2^32, and finishes in minutes or hours of computation on a standard workstation. This demonstrates that CMEA is deeply flawed.

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