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Posted by Bill Horne on May 11, 2008, 10:57 pm
Koos van den Hout wrote:
>
>> Usenet is getting a flood of Velveeta this morning, all of it touting
>> some scheme to "Encrypt" SMS messages, and supposedly protect them
>> from interception by the police. [snip]
>
>> 1. Does anyone know who is sending these? Is (s)he for real or just a hired
gun? (1)
>
> My best guess from reading several versions of the message you refer to: it
> is a hippie who got all excited when he saw news that the police can
> monitor text messages, he collected a few links to existing options to
> encrypt your text message traffic and got those out to the world in order
> to make everyone aware of this breach of privacy and hoping everyone would
> switch to encrypted messaging.
[snip]
> I visited one of the advertised sites. That is not a spammer site. I can
> find out the domain owner, it is not registered via a shady registrar in a
> country known for spam, and it has a matching registration for the IP also
> in a clean network neighbourhood.
I suppose you're right, although I can't help but wonder if someone is
touting SMS encryption as a roundabout way of pumping a common
underlying technology which is in use by all the sites mentioned.
>> 2. Is it possible to add AES encryption to SMS on the "average" cell phone?
>
> A (GSM) cell phone has encryption in itself in order to work. For
> applications to use it they would need to be symbian or java applications
> with access to message sending/receiving functions.
But is it AES, or something less robust? If it's AES, then the
encryption is believable, but if it's a less robust method, then it
would make sense for someone to tout it via Velveeta.
[snip]
> What I think happened that the text messages were sent out when the sender
> was already under investigation for drug dealing so search warrants
> were all in place. Which means the police just were very surprised at
> the stupidity of openly mentioning the drugdeals in text messages. A lot
> of police work is based on babbling (or in modern times: text-babbling)
> self-incriminating which is why phone taps are so popular with the police.
>
> Koos
I guess that's the part I find hard to believe: the notion that
college students could be so stupid as to allegedly conduct a drug
ring using _any_ electronic communication is bad enough, and if it's
true, it speaks volumes about the hubris and arrogance some spoiled
children exhibit. An indictment isn't a conviction, of course, so I'll
leave that aspect to the courts.
My stumbling point is this Velveeta: it just doesn't track my notion
of something a knowledgeable Internaut would do to protest what (s)he
obviously feels is unwarranted (pun intended) monitoring. I _want_
there to be a commercial motive so that the effort makes sense.
I guess you're right: it's probably a futile gesture by someone who
doesn't accept that police have a job to do.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
Temporary Moderator
Telecom Digest
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