Security by obscurity is the fool's way of saying "hack me"! While we have come to expect these antics from those who purvey systems of questionable security, the telecommunications industry should have been more careful. It seems now that they are infected with that curious brand of idiocy. They thought that they had an unbreakable system.

The hack on GSM had been expected though the primary emphasis of the Blackbox industry has traditionally been on exploitable hacks. The resources and expertise necessary to commercialise the hack exists in Europe and no doubt in the USA.

Analogue phone systems have been plagued with compromises from simple ones such as people monitoring with radio scanners to more complex ones such as over-air data being snatched and used to make free phonecalls (at the expense of the legitimate users). GSM was supposed to be immune to these problems. Of course we had to take the word of these morons who would not subject the crypto system to peer review. The problem for them now is which bunch of the morons is responsible and who pays for the upgrades?

The security upgrade problems are far larger than those of Pay-TV. With an estimated 80 Million GSM users throughout the planet, the cost of repair will be high. The software fix for GSM headends/exchanges could be implemented easily but each of the 80 Million cards would have to be replaced.