Forward from anonymous: Wed, 21 Oct 98 An engineer at a US wireless telecom and a contributor to Cryptologia--has asked me to look into the present status of attacks on the GSM encryption schemes: comp128 (a3a8 authentication, etc.) and, more importantly, the A5.1 and A5.2 voice/data encryption algorithms. After searching the web, I see that you have similar interests in this matter. I've already sent off inquiries to some of the researchers in this area--Ross Anderson, Simon Shepherd and the two Berkeley students (Goldberg and Wagner). So far, I've only heard back from Wagner. Do you have anything interesting to say about this matter--has anything happened since the Spring? Has a consensus been reached on some of the issues discussed in the <http://jya.com/crack-a5.htm> document? I'm trying to get a handle on the present state-of-the art: Where do things presently stand--who is doing the work and what, if anything, has been verified/demonstrated? Has A5 been cracked? What can be said about the possibility of intercepting and decoding an on-air conversation?