Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down

[David Wagner]

Ian Grigg  wrote:
>(Similar to GSM's.  That is hard to attack,
>there is AFAIR no 'trival' attack, [...]

Just wait a little while.

By the way, one can already buy fake base stations that
mount man-in-the-middle attacks on GSM as a way to eavesdrop
on GSM calls.  It's off the shelf, but it costs ridiculous
amounts of money.

>Now, it seems that the US standards didn't get
>even that.

Right.  The major barrier is the need for a digital
scanner (which indeed is a major barrier against certain
threat models, but not a barrier for other threat models).

>And, market forces
>and all that, one would think that this would
>happen in due course.

I'm less optimistic.  Market forces being what they are,
one would expect that one would quickly get cellphones that
are *claimed* and *perceived* to be more secure, regardless
of their true merits or demerits.

Oh wait, that already happened.