NSA/GCHQ hacked & stole ALL cell phone SIM Encryption Keys!!

[Grzyadms4x4]

NSA/GCHQ stole ALL cell phone SIM Encryption Keys!!

I big middle finger to these (beep)! Fighting terrorism my ASS!!!

The U.S. and British intelligence agencies pulled off the encryption key heist in great stealth, giving them the ability to intercept and decrypt communications without alerting the wireless network provider, the foreign government or the individual user that they have been targeted. “Gaining access to a database of keys is pretty much game over for cellular encryption,” says Matthew Green, a cryptography specialist at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. The massive key theft is “bad news for phone security. Really bad news.”

"In order for the phone to be able to connect to the wireless carrier’s network, the phone — with the help of the SIM — authenticates itself using the Key that has been programmed onto the SIM. The phone conducts a secret “handshake” that validates that the Key on the SIM matches the Key held by the mobile company. Once that happens, the communications between the phone and the network are encrypted."

In short: the NSA/GCHQ hacked the world's leading manufacturer of SIM cards and stole the encryption keys to the cards they make; and they make them for most of the world's major cell phone carriers. The implications are huge. Moreover, how they did it shows once again that innocent people - not terrorists, not 'bad guys', not criminals, not 'militants' - are being cyberstalked, in this case as a means to an end. Numerous technologists/network administrators/network engineers/etc are innocent victims in this latest episode, and give the lie to Obama's assurances that normal people going about their business are not targets.