Mobile security health poor in Europe, Morocco and Thailand, researcher finds

Recently, a mobile security expert, Karsten Nohl, revealed that many mobile network operators provide poor security for consumers againstunlawful surveillance and identity theft in Europe, Morocco and Thailand. His work spanned 11 countries and showed that he was able to hack into mobile conversations and texts, as well as imitate the account identities of mobile users using a cheap, Motorola cell and some free decryption software.

Mr. Nohl also stated that operators could quite have easily fixed such security vulnerabilities with a simple software patch. Only two of the operators that he studied, T-Mobile in Germany and Swisscom in Switzerland, had taken steps to improve the security of their mobile and data services, which are simple and low cost procedures.

Source: NY TIMES, DEC 25, 2011

URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/technology/26iht-hack26.html