Encryption Made For Police and Military Radios May Be Easily Cracked (wired.com) 64
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Two years ago, researchers in the Netherlands discovered an intentional backdoor in an encryption algorithm baked into radios used by critical infrastructure -- as well as police, intelligence agencies, and military forces around the world -- that made any communication secured with the algorithm vulnerable to eavesdropping. When the researchers publicly disclosed the issue in 2023, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), which developed the algorithm, advised anyone using it for sensitive communication to deploy an end-to-end encryption solution on top of the flawed algorithm to bolster the security of their communications. But now the same researchers have found that at least one implementation of the end-to-end encryption solution endorsed by ETSI has a similar issue that makes it equally vulnerable to eavesdropping. The encryption algorithm used for the device they examined starts with a 128-bit key, but this gets compressed to 56 bits before it encrypts traffic, making it easier to crack. It's not clear who is using this implementation of the end-to-end encryption algorithm, nor if anyone using devices with the end-to-end encryption is aware of the security vulnerability in them. Wired notes that the end-to-end encryption the researchers examined is most commonly used by law enforcement and national security teams. "But ETSI's endorsement of the algorithm two years ago to mitigate flaws found in its lower-level encryption algorithm suggests it may be used more widely now than at the time."
Military grade security (Score:3)
56 Bit RSA.
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Re:Why Encryption? (Score:4, Interesting)
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You mean like they did for decades when all radio was open?
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He means they surprisingly didn't do it much.
Re:Why Encryption? (Score:4, Interesting)
Encryption doesn't matter. Just set up the scanner close call mode and scram when anyone transmits nearby. You don't actually need to know what they are saying. If you are up to no good, it's probably about you.
Re:Why Encryption? (Score:5, Insightful)
Encryption doesn't matter. Just set up the scanner close call mode and scram when anyone transmits nearby. You don't actually need to know what they are saying. If you are up to no good, it's probably about you.
That's not how Land Mobile Radio works. They aren't using 2 way walkie talkies, they are transmitting to a base station that is networked together to hundreds of base stations across your city which then transmit out to any portable or mobile terminal that is registered to it. It's very similar to how mobile phones work and has been for about 50 years already, even back in the analogue days.
You'll pick up nothing but false positives with your method.
Re: Why Encryption? (Score:2)
Close call mode [radioreference.com] is intended to recieve only signals that are powerful or close by. Unless you are near the base station or the mobile unit is within a few blocks, it recieves nothing.
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You missed the point. The RF signal you're picking up likely has nothing to do with your crime.
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Don't care. I'm not hanging around.
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If you're planning mission critical communications over the radio you're doing it wrong.
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A lot of Internet communications are transmitted over radio waves, even backbone stuff in some cases so you can't really tell if your data has been over radio waves between some hops.
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I'm sorry but this is the dumbest most irrelevant comment put on Slashdot. We're not talking about "radio waves". We're talking about TETRA Land Mobile Radio systems used for a specific purpose. And no precisely no internet traffic goes over this system because the bandwidth for it is on par with an ISDN line from the 1990s.
Context is important when having a conversation, please follow the context being discussed.
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If you're planning mission critical communications over the radio you're doing it wrong.
That's what he said.
I'm sorry but this is the dumbest most irrelevant comment put on Slashdot. We're not talking about "radio waves". We're talking about TETRA Land Mobile Radio systems used for a specific purpose. And no precisely no internet traffic goes over this system because the bandwidth for it is on par with an ISDN line from the 1990s.
Context is important when having a conversation, please follow the context being discussed.
That's not what you said initially above. Just use LTE ip radio or something equally secure and call it a day. Also, ISDN is plenty of bandwidth for voice. Ultimately, you are the one commenting stupidly. There exists several secure implementations for radio voice communication so you were wrong because we ourselves use radios for very secure mission critical communications and we aren't alone, duh!
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Are we really calling them "bad guys?" That's how 4 year olds talk.
I know GW Bush normalised it 24 years ago, but come on, we have more word power than that.
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We shall coin a new better term that wouldn't hurt said group of people's feelings
"Good behavior challenged persons ?"
Other ideas ?
(no offense to you Bozzio, I know you didn't mean it that way
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Actually 4-year-olds call them "baddies" now, so "bad guys" is a step up.
Re:Why Encryption? (Score:5, Interesting)
The police should not be able to have encrypted communications. Everything they say on the radio should be publicly accessible and a public record.
These two statements are not mutually exclusive. It's reasonable to assert that the communications should be a matter of public record while also suggesting that real time access to those communications should be restricted for the sake of officer safety and operational security. You might argue that leaving the records in the hands of the police is in itself a problem, but a different record keeping solution can be devised to solve that issue that doesn't require everybody and their grandmother to be able to eavesdrop on a police channel.
Re:Why Encryption? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, this. All communications should be secure. All official communications should be recorded, just like all officials who interact with the public should have those interactions recorded. Those communications should NOT be controlled by those who would be embarrassed by them, though this is a hard problem without a complete solution (and may be unsolvable). We should be able to approach a good solution though this requires pissing off officials and powerful/rich folks.
The current US administration has decided to protect police no matter how corrupt they become (executive order from April), so if you voted for the party in power, well, you now have the police state you wanted.
Many years ago, on the Stargate SG-1 TV show, an advanced race (non-human) found that one of their leaders had killed someone and had messed with official records to hide this. Another leader mentioned that messing with the records was considered a far worse crime than the murder or possible treason. THAT is the world I want to live in.
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That said - I am in favor of all such communications being recorded and accessible through proper channels. Notably a court order. But all communications accessible to the public at all times - absolutely not.
They feel our communications should be accessible to them at all times, so it's only fair. Everything they say should be in the clear as they claim to be "public servants".
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Locally it is becoming a big question. The police maintain that sensitive/personally identifiable information is included in the transmissions and therefore access needs to be restricted. Encouraging out-of-band communication for that ends up pushing OOB for other things and it becomes a slippery slope. Locally they are trying to solve it where (certified) media has access to one talk group... but then you have issues like the current federal pressure on the media to limit reporting on some things.
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With names, addresses, and specific details about crimes all redacted.
Agree! (Score:4, Interesting)
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So when they need to communicate sensitive information about victims, it should all be public?
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Re: Why Encryption? (Score:2)
USA fascists worse (Score:2)
Yeah, like USA fascists don't put backdoors in each and every technology ?
RC4 is still widely used in APCO-25 systems (Score:3)
In the US, a lot of agencies are still using RC4 (known as Motorola advanced digital privacy, aka ADP ) for critical communications. And these agencies have zero clue how easy it would be to brute force the keys.
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It's not about zero clue, it's about preventing inadvertent listening. There's very little operational need for perfect security for emergency services. Land mobile radio by design has very limited security in most cases just to stop someone setting up the wrong radio from accessing the wrong communications. It is like that with APCO-25 (P25) and it's like that with TETRA (which is what is used in Europe).
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Yet would you use RC4 for wifi or web security?
Poor security is no security, and I'm shocked someone hasn't written a program that would tie into a cheap realtek SDR and eat ADP keys for breakfast.
It would be like when DVD encryption got cracked. Once someone buys a case a beer and spends a weekend coding it, the horse is out of the barn for good.
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Two completely different things. With radios you need to be within physical range of the radio with advanced signal-interception gear to capture and decrypt the conversation, which will then give you some tactical comms that could well be out of date by the time you've recovered it.
With Internet-based stuff any attacker anywhere in the world with access to on-path capabilities can capture and decrypt at their leisure, and it's typically data that isn't short-term tactical comms that's stale after five min
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Yet would you use RC4 for wifi or web security?
Poor security is no security, and I'm shocked someone hasn't written a program that would tie into a cheap realtek SDR and eat ADP keys for breakfast.
Firstly such programs exist. Secondly you're spot on, poor security is no security. But you missed my point. The use case here isn't security. Would I use RC4 for Wifi? No, that would give someone access to my home network which has sensitive data. Would I use RC4 for web security? Yeah for most things I do absolutely. Take this post for example: I don't give a shit who reads it. Heck I don't give a shit if my Slashdot account is compromised. I give so little shits that I happily used Slashdot without any e
Isn't this exactly what governments have demanded? (Score:4, Interesting)
Back doors into encrypted communications? Is there a government in the world that hasn't demanded exactly this?
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Somebody has to watch the watchers.
It should be a felony to insert backdoors (Score:1)
Spooks backdoor encryption devices - who knew :o (Score:2)
Backdoor? (Score:4, Interesting)
That doesn't really sound like a backdoor.
The original article says the standard cut it down to meet export control requirements. The algorithm in question is one of four choices, and the standard makes pretty clear that it's the one for shady foreigners:
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It gets worse, TEA1 truncates the key to 32 bits.
All these standards were developed in the 90's, back when they thought SSL 2.0 was fine, but turned out to the full of flaws. SSL 3.0 was also flawed.
40 bit RC4 and DES? You got the shitty algorithms in your web servers and browsers if you didn't work around the export restrictions of the time.
Re:Backdoor? (Score:4, Informative)
TEA1 isn't meant for any sensitive applications, it was truncated on purpose. Its the base encryption designed to not inadvertently have devices misregister on the wrong networks. No one gives a shit about you calling your logistics man over the radio from the security hut that a truck is coming his way ready to unload. That's the kind of thing TEA1 encryption was meant for - all applications which were previously not encrypted at all.
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The US didn't put a bunch of football field sized satellites into space and build hidden rooms in everyone's network switching buildings so they could record stuff that's indistinguishable from static. TETRA is from 1995, when people were "smuggling munitions" by wearing t-shirts with the RSA algorithm printed on them.
Dumb people making dumb decisions (Score:2)
What else is new?
Radio shop (Score:3)
The radios are more expensive. The power requirements are more, meaning more gasoline and pollution or a lifetime. Their repair is more money and more difficult to do, meaning they get junked sooner--happy earth day. They would likely be more sensitive/fragile to noise during reception, making conversation loss more of an issue (I saw that at that job), the last thing you'd want. Also, there would be a transmission delay similar to today's digital cellular phones (albeit, that's probably trivial).
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I currently work in a radio shop. Modern 2-way radios are software defined radios (SDR's), not the old crystal oscillator technology. Encryption is just another feature you can buy and install in the radio. Encrypted and un-encrypted radios are the same hardware now, so they are no harder to repair and they operate exactly the same. There is no delay when using encryption.
This would be like making an assessment of today's computing technology by using experiences from the 1990's.
Yes, there are old and insec