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I have first-hand knowledge that this exploit is currently in use in the Middle East and is purchasable from at least one American corporation. It must be assumed that intelligence agencies have had this capability for the entirety of the GSM deployment.

Base station security is a separate matter. Why do you think A5/1 influences that?

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I don't. I'm saying, in the universe of things that could go wrong with commercial GSM deployments, this is not the worst likely thing.

If I remember right, even Applied Cryptography managed to call out A5 as bad.

Ah, yes. It is my understanding that there were governmental pressures to deploy a known-weak system.

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