However, it seems like everything is getting back into order, as carriers are acting quick to fix any hacks that come their way. SIM cards using the newer Triple DES encryption are safe, but out of all the mobile phones littering the world, about half of them use SIM cards that still use the older DES encryption. Physically replacing millions of SIM cards would’ve been an expensive and painstaking task by carriers, but instead, they took advantage of the same Java vulnerability that Nohl found and used it to hack into their own SIM cards and patch the exploit. Nohl also praised the carriers’ quick response to the hack, and he hopes that more carriers will jump on board in the near future to fix their SIM cards. Boot from a known good copy of Linux (read-only media), reflash HD firmware as soon as you open the box. Because of this, he was only able to demonstrate segments of the hack, and he didn’t name the carriers who fixed it. The second to update the encryption keys in your SIM cards.

You may need to replace your current SIM card. Contact your Carrier and check for activation or network problems. Make sure the SIM card that you inserted is still active with your mobile network. Nohl was scheduled to demonstrate his SIM card hack earlier this week at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas, but instead, he announced that five wireless carriers had rushed to push out updates that patched the issue. Sometimes using a card from a different iPhone model or another smartphone manufacturer can cause an Invalid SIM Card issue.

However, instead of replacing all these SIM cards and mailing new ones out with the new encryption, carriers were able to hack into the SIM cards themselves in order patch them up remotely.

Security researcher Karsten Nohl of Security Research Labs discovered the exploit and said that up to 750 million handsets could’ve been vulnerable to the hack, noting that SIM cards using older data encryption methods were at risk.

Update sim card hack