Satellite phones vulnerable to eavesdropping

Satellite telephones used by military and emergency relief organisations and usually considered secure from eavesdropping are vulnerable to security attack, according to researchers associated with the Horst Görtz Institute for IT-Security at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany.

Using simple equipment and commercially available satellite phones, they were able to quickly reverse-engineer the encryption algorithms used by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. The researchers were “surprised by the total lack of protection measures”.

For now, the researchers suggest, security-conscious users “will have to wait for the development of new technologies and standards, or make use of other means of communication for confidential calls”.