This week cryptographers Karsten Nohl from University of Virginia and Erik Tews of the Darmstadt University of Technology announced that they had broken the DECT encryption standard. Who cares, you ask? The Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications or DECT standard is what prevents someone parked outside your house from being able to listen in on telephone conversations you are having on your 1.9 GHz DECT cordless phone. (So, that’s what that label on the receiver means.)
Nohl told Dan Goodin from The Register that he cracked the code by putting the DECT chip under the electron microscope and then comparing his findings with information disclosed in the published patent(s). … More