How secure do we think broadband wireless is? Should I be willing to do online banking over a mobile connection? I assume that it's more secure than, say, WEP, but I'd love to be pointed towards any information about how easy cellular connections are to crack.
2 Answers
I'd say it doesn't matter how easy cell. connections are to crack because you are always using SSL/TLS encryption over that, and that hasn't been cracked yet. Somebody might be able to do a man in the middle attack with SSL but then you would get an invalid certificate warning, so you wouldn't continue with the session anyway.
I wouldn't do online banking over a mobile phone connection because there's other possible attacks that aren't specific to the 3G/carrier connection itself.
For example, Bluetooth on many mobile phones can be used for connection sharing with computers, and is not exactly known to be a secure protocol itself.
With the recent release of 'fuzzing' tools for mobile phones, exploitation through SMS may become a common attack vector. See this Blackhat whitepaper for more information.
(Note on that paper, a lot of sensationalist coverage focuses on iPhone, but the vulnerabilities are possible on Android and Windows Mobile)