Karsten Nohl, a security expert from Germany, has claimed that he has been able to successfully crack the GSM encryption algorithm, a development which can make call through GSM operators vulnerable to snooping.

The hacker has shared that he has been able to listen in on people's conversations with increased ease with the use of equipment which has cost him a few thousand dollars and a set of cracking tables, which have been compiled by him in association with his team over the past 6 months.

Intercepting calls is a form of breach of privacy and is illegal in many countries, including the US, and Mr. Nohl was careful enough to not actually go ahead and release a cracking a cracking device. "If you can work a BitTorrent client and a standard GNU build process then you can do it all, too", he said.

GSM, which is the most widely used mobile standard across the globe, works on an encryption algorithm which is a mere 21 years old, a 64-bit cipher called A5/1. But it seems it is not simply up-to the mark anymore, as has been demonstrated by the hacker.

But GSM Alliance's more recent A5/3 standard used for 3G is more secure.