Welcome to the Tech Meme Ride Home for Friday, June 18th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough.

Today, where some of the base encryption algorithms on cell networks deliberately

nerved, the first ever mass arrest of a ransomware gang,

proof that Google is working on a find my network rival, and of course the weekend long read suggestions here's what you

miss today in the world of tech. A bombshell new report says that cell network encryption underpinning a lot of phone networks

was deliberately weakened by its original designers, quoting motherboard. A weakness in the algorithm used to encrypt cell phone

data in the 1990s and 2000s, allowed hackers to spy on some internet traffic

according to a new research paper. The paper has sent shock waves

through the encryption community because of what it implies. The researchers believe

that the mathematical probability of the weakness being introduced on accident is extremely low.

Thus they speculate that a weakness was intentionally put into the algorithm.

After the paper was published, the group that designed the algorithm confirmed, this was the case.

Researchers from several universities in Europe found that the encryption algorithm GEA

1, which was used in cell phones when the that at least one cryptography expert sees as a back door.

The researchers said they obtained two encryption algorithms, G.E.A.1 and G.E.A.2, which are proprietary

and thus not public from a source.

They then analyze them and realize they were vulnerable to attacks that allowed for

decryption of all traffic.

When trying to reverse engineer the algorithm, the researchers wrote that to simplify, they tried

to design a similar encryption algorithm using a random number

generator often used in cryptography and never came close to creating an

encryption scheme as weak as the one actually used.

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