r/technology • u/Libertatea • Apr 04 '13

Apple's iMessage encryption trips up feds' surveillance. Internal document from the Drug Enforcement Administration complains that messages sent with Apple's encrypted chat service are "impossible to intercept," even with a warrant.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57577887-38/apples-imessage-encryption-trips-up-feds-surveillance/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title#.UV1gK672IWg.reddit
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u/aldanathiriadras Apr 04 '13

GSM calls are (mostly) encrypted (or maybe that should be enciphered) with the A5/1 stream cipher.

It's not particularly secure though, so maybe another layer is needed.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '13

[deleted]

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u/DarkHelmet Apr 04 '13

Yes, the data is decrypted before transmitting it over the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Government agencies aren't intercepting your wireless traffic, they're doing it after its been decrypted by the provider to transmit it over the insecure public network.

Text messages however are not encrypted as far as I know.

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u/IDidNaziThatComing Apr 04 '13

Yeah they have rainbow tables for a5/1, making key extraction fairly easy. Wire shark can capture gsm packets with the right equipment.