Chunghwa Telecom sees no impact from Gemalto hacking issue

[AnonOps]

Chunghwa Telecom sees no impact from Gemalto hacking issue

CNA
2015-02-27

A model poses by an advertisement for Chunghwa Telecom's 4G LTE service, July 7, 2014. (File photo/Yen Chien-lung)

Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's largest mobile provider, gave an assurance Thursday that its customers' privacy remains secure, despite the alleged hacking of SIM card encryption keys based on Gemalto technology, the world's largest maker of mobile SIM cards.

"Based on Gemalto's response to Chunghwa Telecom, there is no evidence or concern that our customers' SIM card encryption keys have been exposed in transit," Lin Kuo-feng, president of Chunghwa Telecom's mobile business group, told a media gathering to announce the company's 2015 annual targets.

Chunghwa Telecom will carefully review its internal data transfer system and continue its efforts to improve information security for all customers, Lin added.

Gemalto responded a day earlier to a Feb. 19 report that US and British spies had hacked into its systems to steal codes that protect the privacy of billions of mobile phone users.

The Franco-Dutch technology firm said the attacks, which Gemalto detected in 2010 and 2011, only breached its office networks and could not have resulted in a massive theft of SIM encryption keys.

In the case of an eventual key theft, the intelligence services would only be able to spy on communications on second-generation (2G) mobile networks, the SIM card maker said in a statement, adding that 3G and 4G networks are not vulnerable to this type of attack.

Gemalto makes smart chips for mobile phones, bank cards and biometric passports. It counts 450 wireless network providers around the world as customers, including Verizon, AT&T and Vodafone.