X-Force claims 5 years old COMP128 crack?

["yossarian" <yossarian () planet nl>]

In HNS news I saw a link to a new GSM hack. Being interested in this topic,
if followed it, and thru net-security.org came on the VNUNet.com site. The
story says how researchers from the X-Force broke COMP128 and A5/1 and 2.

And I quote: "The most commonly used encryption algorithm to authenticate
users on a GSM network is known as COMP128, which was broken by David Wagner
and Ian Goldberg in less than a day." Hey, I thought, this ain't new. So I
checked. In 1998  Ian Goldberg (ISAAC research group) and Marc Briceno
published a lengthy and detailed paper on this same topic. If they new, they
should have given credit, IMHO.

Well, either they did not verify if this was a new job - which it isn't, or
there story was messed up by some reporter. It isn't on the X-Force site, so
I couldn't find out who messed up, but it sure ain't prutty.

Yossarian

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