From 26C3 Public Wiki
The demonstration is canceled
The demonstration of cracking A5/1 at 26C3 planed for today is canceled. Let me explain the reasons and perhaps start a discussion on how the project should progress from here:
A. The GSMA and some of its members make strong claims that what we do is illegal. We do not believe that is the case and that this research has not once crossed the line into illegality. However, not being lawyers ourselves and knowing how complex wire-tapping laws are, we want to reconfirm with our counsel that using the rainbow tables for academic purposes is legal.
B. Starting the discussion on how much security GSM deserves was one of our main goals. We did it. The next steps must not contradict this positive message we want to get across. I'll put this as a question to the list: Do we risk killing a positive dialogue with operators and suppliers by providing attack tools too fast? I understand that we are 15 years into hacking GSM, but it did hit some industry players as news this week. Would it be fair to give them a few extra weeks to digest what should have been known years ago?
Please let me know what you all think ... The project mailing list is: http://lists.reflextor.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a51
Thank you, -Karsten