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Showing posts from May, 2012

Swiss video on mobile phone security

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This is an informative video from the Swiss television program Einstein , about the potential threats and risks of mobile cell phones: The phone shown in this report is the Secure Mobile Phone Omnisec 230 (fact sheet in PDF) , made by the Swiss firm Omnisec AG . This is a modified HTC smart phone, with a hardened Android operating system, and with all risk providing applications (like bluetooth and GPS) removed. The microSD Security Module provides encryption with 256-bits key length to secure communication for classification levels up to Top Secret. But, the cost for two of such phones is said to be around 50.000,- Swiss Franks. UMTS For most people, a far more affordable way to get better security for cell phone communication is just to use the UMTS or 3G mobile network, instead of GSM. Where GSM only has authentication of the user to the network, UMTS uses mutual authentication, which means the mobile user and the network authenticate each other. This prevents a so called "man

Obama on vacation

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In the previous post we saw the cool phones the American president uses in his Oval Office. This time we take a look at the telephone equipment he uses when he is on vacation, because "Presidents don't get vacations, they just get a change of scenery." as a former president once said. For this purpose we have two nice pictures from the vacation of president Obama from August 18 to August 29, 2011 on the Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. In the first picture we see president Barack Obama, reflected in a mirror, conducting a conference call on the situation in Libya with his national security staff. Also participating is John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, who sits on the right: President Barack Obama and his assistant John Brennan in a conference call. August 22, 2011 Note how the telephone and power cables are taped onto the table (White House photo by Pete Souza - click f