watch out the feds will be wanting your remote now.

So since all you guys said it's simply impossible for the remote to scan cell-phone-signals, i was wondering about phas's reply...even though he said it doesn't work well, he says it actually works! So i'm confused now?!

he is messing with your head. This is how these sites stay alive. they count on the uncertainty of people. The internet is all about tricking people and making money off them.

The entire site is as Bander put it BS.

alright i think i got it...simple BS! Sadly I have to say though....how amazing would it be if it actually worked...
well i guess everybody could listen to my phone calls....
I only write sms anyways!

SMS messages are easily caught by a remote and a typewriter
@Phas: For better results try a better(edit: larger) reflecting bowl, or a remote with up to 8 batteries.

lets also stop these guys:
http://www.shorty.com/bonsaikitten/index.html

and get internet this way
http://www.google.com/tisp/install.html

o and btw this is the real url for wikipedia
http://uncyclopedia.org

and if you are bored going to church/mosque/synagogue/... you can always try these religons
http://www.venganza.org/evidence/
http://www.scientology.org/ (http://www.zipperfish.com/toons/yaafm/yaafm-11-scientology/ the concise version of that first website)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2211963,00.html

We humans are often desperately looking to believe something, it's quite a lot harder to convince people something isn't true, than otherwise.



Mind you intercepting and decrypting cellphones is possible, it's weak crypto, but you won't do it with a remote 2 wires and a microphone. It's fun stuff to study. how mobile phones actually work. And why they don't work on new years eve it's obvious that there isn't a frequency for every cellphone, so there is a MAC (multiple access control) there is a lot of interference. The mobile phone companies need to know where you are, or they won't be able to find you when they have a call. They can't just use all the masts and check if you are there. You could even be roaming on another network.But they can't ask your cellphone to constantly tell the phone company where it is, the poor mobile device wouldn't have any battery left. So how do they do it? if you have the time pick up some docs on how that stuff actually works, great fun.

ps: had it been that simple, i would have posted it in the "cool hacks" thread long long ago

SMS-es can be intercepted though.
I've seen it in action. Any idea how they do it?

i never wondered much about SMS. There are however "hacks", that involve installing software on the cellphone, that software would then just forward any incoming/outgoing text messages.

anyway as i said before you can crack the crypto:
[there was a pretty cool link here but i removed it in favor of the next link]

but not with your universal remote. But I should be careful what I reveal here ... there is a ch.... on one of the challenge sites that is really worth looking into.
hell i'll link you to it (Challenge made by DFyNt2U.) solve that challenge to get a better understanding of the crypto. I am a bit naughty here because I ruined the first part of the challenge... finding out what the hell it is about ... but still a fun challenge. to that end i'll probably delete this link again relatively soon (ye be warned)


Also there is one thing to mention i guess. cellphone traffic is __only__ encrypted between the cellular phone and the basestation tranceiver. once it reaches the tranceiver mast it travels through the rest of the network unencrypted.

I'll check some specifications, and see if SMS is easier to intercept/decrypt than voice, i know they use the same "slots" on the same channels, but i don't know if they use the encryption. would make sense both ways.

[edit] I have it on pretty good authority that SMS is encrypted in the same way. If you have seen it been intercepted, there was probably something else in play. or they actually did crack the crypto, which is possible just not with a remote.

They are actively hacking at the cellphone algorithms though, even more so than since i checked it last. In a few months it's probably as secure as WEP, still it will require just a tad more (a TB sized rainbow cracking table, slightly more sophisticated radio, slightly more cracking time, ...) than your universal remote+2 wires+microphone.

btw iirc SIM cards are little computers in the way that they don't only store data, but also perform some computations for the encryption, probably not unlike rsa coprocessors

ANYWAY when gsm crypto is concerned, it's a <=64bit block cipher just like DES (you know the thing you run johntheripper agains) and the algorithm is even weaker than DES.

Just like all the other crypto's implemented in the past decades, they forgot to design in a lifespan and replacement scheme. crypto algorithms need to be replaced once they are broken, well much sooner actually.
problem is, that isn't that easy with cellphones. many crypto's in use today like WEP, DVD, windows LM, WEP, mysql HASH, MD5 (in a specific way), ... are broken, weak, and legacy... but we have to
cope with them. As I'm sure I've done my best to explain in the other threads on this forum

PS: I hate it though how people use "i have seen it in action" because that is the worst kind of unverifiable hearsay. Whereas my statements can easily be checked with the specifications. A when, how, where, who would help greatly. I can also find people who have seen elephants disappearing by magicians, and ufo's in action.

PS2: Don't worry though i hate people who use the word "energy" to answer all existential questions even more.

My guess is that this is not intercepting cell traffic but is instead picking up cordless phone signals. Would make far more sense as I doubt many of these undergo encryption. As for the bowl thing, I know someone who uses a wok as a satellite dish for pirate television (lol), as long as the shape is vaguely parabolic the results are okay.

There is no way in hell it is decrpyting GSM though

it's just fake, no need to make sense of it.