Man it used to so much fun to listen in on a scanner to cell phones, of course you had to have an unblocked scanner, like maybe a friend in Hong Kong could score you one or you could modify a Bearcat...I mean I heard about all this um on the Internet...I never really you know would do it...



uh oh spaghetti-o!



TEL AVIV (Reuters) - An Israeli scientist said on Wednesday his team had found a way to break into mobile phone calls on ubiquitous GSM networks, potentially allowing eavesdroppers to listen in on conversations and even take on a caller's identity.



Professor Eli Biham of the Technion Institute in Haifa said he was shocked when doctoral student Elad Barkan told him he had found a fundamental error in the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) code.



"We can listen in to a call while it is still at the ringing stage and within a fraction of a second know everything about the user," Biham said. "Then we can listen in to the call."



"Using a special device it's possible to steal calls and impersonate callers in the middle of a call as it's happening," he said. GSM code writers made a mistake in giving high priority to call quality, correcting for noise and interference, and only then encrypting, Biham said.