An overview of current security and privacy issues in modern telecommunications

Abstract

The main challenge in the 20th century was to provide secure telecommunication services to professional users (military, police, security services, etc.) and to provide basic access to telecommunication services to private users (individuals and business organizations). A high level of security for private users was not important for many reasons: low risk, low performance devices, low level of technical knowledge, etc. In the 21st century, we have witnessed significant changes in this field. In the last few years, the real capabilities of government agencies became apparent in the field of information security, showning themselves to be woefully lacking, and failing to adequately respond to new challenges. The trend of moving security services focus to mass surveillance, combined with the inability to keep these functions solely in the hands of authorized agencies, is concerning. For private users, an even more serious transformation is happening. The number of people using telecommunication services is rapidly growing, as well as the intensity of using these services. That also implies the reduction of the average technical knowledge of users, which further requires simplified user interfaces for these services. Additionally, the value of the content in these communications is growing and becoming more complex. To survive in the market, the companies that produce telecommunication devices are forced to introduce new features as quickly as possible. The security aspect is, in most cases, seriously considered only after serious incidents occur. Additionally, those companies sometime intentionally break user's privacy and security in order to attain a better position in the market, and to increase their profit, alone or in cooperation with government security services. In this paper we tried to make an overview of the current state in the aforementioned security aspects, and to refer readers to current problems.