I would not do this. Intercepting cell phone signals is illegal in the US. If you do this and are caught (brag on Facebook, Twitter), the penalties may be harsh.
What makes you think Standard US Cellular Network (AT&T, T-Mobile, etc) GSM traffic isn't encrypted? It is encrypted, just that that at least some of the older ciphers used have been broken. Gr-GSM (which is mentioned used in the link) has some basic implementation to decrypt traffic built into it. I've only skimmed it over, so I'm no expert on the project, but I wouldn't go around sniffing a cellular network's traffic without some careful consideration of what the tools you are using are doing.
Heh and I thought I was cool using my hackrf to ring my doorbell!
Started attending an amateur radio club after I completed Mike Ossmans video lectures (which are great). Those guys just had no interest in SDR though. They thought being able to waterfall plot the entire UHF band was nifty but that was about it :-( I need some new friends!
Yes, I had a similar experience here with my local Ham club. I used to go to meetings in my home town when I was a kid. I must have watched too many YouTube videos, but I had visions of guys swapping stories of their latest eBay spectrum analyzer repairs, home brew microwave transmitters, RF pcb designs, and RF DSP. Nope: It was the same club I had been to 20 years ago. I'm sure it differs by area, but most of the interest seems to be in Ham culture. QSL cards, bunny hunt. I still like to go, there is a ton of experience in one room; guys that have been in the industry for their whole life.
I feel like that since two years. Depending on where you live and what your interests are it can be surprisingly difficult to find someone who shares your excitement.
Does someone of you have an idea how to find others who also like, for example, SDRs? Are there some generic guides?
Hey, if you have a hackerspace near you, just drop in and pretty sure you'll find some like-minded people for almost any kind of interest (from cooking to electronics, from programming to board games...)
Other than that, there are IRC channels for many different topics in tech, that can be quite busy and social. Depends on luck and topic, but could check it out.
For SDR specifically, could start with a project, learn from that, then build further. In my experience plane tracking (aka. ADS-B receivers) is a sort of easy-going and fun starter. There are a lot of guides and different approaches to it. Try that, and see which part interests you more, and follow that. I'm sure you'll find communities along the way.
This guide was not complete. I am running KUbuntu 15, very stock, and several needed packages were not mentioned, and the git clone commands did not work (Permission denied (public key). So here's some help.
I wonder if you can capture USSD traffic with this. USSD is the tech the brings you the little menu or message that pop up on your cell phone's screen usually after dialing a short code like *122#. They're usually used to check your prepaid account's current balance but in Kenya and Somalia, USSD is what powers the mobile banking applications.
If you can capture that traffic, what I would like to know is if its encrypted. If it ain't, someone could do a lot of damage with this thing.
Why people repeatedly trying to sniff GSM with varies devices? from a RTL-SDR to real SDRs, point has been proven for many many times, GSM encryption is broken since a long time ago.
This is specifically my point of view, but I'd be willing to bet people keep doing this because they are curious, to see if they can or just because they want to expand their technical abilities.
I bought a Realtek SDR a while ago. It didn't come with an antenna, so what little signal it receives is overshadowed by all the noise my computer makes. I really need to get that thing working. Incredibly cool stuff.
