Vulnerability allowed listening to other people's calls

Researchers from the Horst Hertz Institute (HGI) at Ruhr University in Germany discovered a vulnerability

which allows you to listen to other people's calls.

The vulnerability concerns the VoLTE standard, whichprovides voice transmission over the LTE network. When two subscribers call each other, an encryption key is generated. The problem is that the same key is used for different calls. The attacker could call the victim immediately after her conversation with another person and obtain the key that encrypted the previous call.

This method works if subscribers are incoverage area of ​​the same communication tower. The researchers noted that the longer the attacker spoke with the victim, the more of the content of the previous conversation he was able to decipher. That is, the criminal needed to involve the person in a dialogue.

The researchers found a security breach in 80% of the communications towers analyzed.