Cracking GSM with a DVB-T Tuner

Hackaday has an article on Cracking GSM with a DVB-T tuner using its SDR. Given my posts on “#badBIOS” having the alleged ability to use your sound card (they said audio but I am thinking tuner card would be more suitable) as a software defined radio in order to jump an airgap in the scenario where one computer gets the evil USB stick inserted into it but is airgapped and the other computer has full network access, is nearby and has also had the evil USB stick work its magic on it. The rtlsdr driver works with those ubiquitous (and often embedded into media PCs) DVB-T tuner cards that use a RTL2832U chip. They often interface over USB and generally sell for <$30 USD. I would think that cracking GSM isn’t as fun as it once was – with only the legacy devices still using it and even services discontinuing in many areas to free up some more spectrum for LTE. This is often unfortunate news for travellers who find that pentaband GSM phones were great to travel with as they invariably worked in every non-CDMA country.