Heroin and crack treatment falls

6 October 2011 Last updated at 12:50 An increasing number of drug users are also said to be recovering from addiction The number of heroin and crack cocaine users needing treatment in England has fallen by 10,000 in two years.

The National Treatment Agency for Substance Abuse said the number of adults that began treatment for the class A drugs fell from 62,963 in 2008/09 to 52,933 in 2010/11.

The steepest decline was in the under-30 age group.

The number of people accessing treatment for all drugs also fell for the second year running.

The latest figures also show an increase in the number of drug users "recovering" from addiction - people who no longer need treatment.

Some 27,969 users were classed as recovering in 2010/11, a rise of 18% on the previous year and 150% higher than 11,208 in 2005/06.

The figures showed that, of the 255,556 people who entered a drugs treatment programme since April 2005 for the first time, 28% (71,887) had successfully completed the course and did not need further treatment.

Paul Hayes, the NTA's chief executive, said the figures showed that "recovery is now becoming a reality for more individuals each year".

"More drug users are recovering from addiction, fewer need treatment, and more are getting over their addiction quickly," he said.

'Not complacent'

Mr Hayes went on to say he thought the figures showed England had "probably passed the high watermark of the impact of epidemic of the late '80s and early '90s and that younger groups of people were reluctant to begin patterns of behaviour... that they've seen cause damage to their older siblings, people in their community, sometimes, sadly their mums and dads."

"They realise the consequences of heroin and crack use and they're turning their backs on that," he said.

He said officials were also seeing "significant declines in purity" which "suggests that attempts to restrict supply are having an impact".

"It's extremely likely, from where we sit, that the different aspects of the government's drugs strategy are coming together to have a positive effect," he added.

But he warned that addiction remained a "serious problem" for many communities, particularly the poorest ones.

"We need to remain vigilant, particularly in a tough economic climate.

"There's absolutely no inevitability that rising unemployment among young people will see a rise to '80s levels of heroin use, but we need to watch that situation very carefully," he said.

'Momentum'

Simon Antrobus, chief executive of Addaction, said it was "hugely encouraging" that young people were shunning heroin and crack cocaine.

He said underlying drug use still needed tackling, and it was important "not to let our guard down".

"While these figures suggest that fewer young people were turning to crack and heroin, Addaction is concerned that an older generation of long-term problem users remains; causing huge problems not only for themselves, but for their children.

"And we know that the children of this group are more likely to develop their own problems.

"So, while we hope today's figures prove to be a milestone in the tackling of the UK's drug problems, we certainly cannot be complacent."

Turning Point's director of substance misuse, John Mallalieu, said the figures were "promising" and the drug support charity had witnessed greater numbers of people recovering from drug addiction.

"This is made easier for them because as a nation, we are becoming more ambitious for drug users and giving them more opportunities to become part of society again.

"It is important that we ensure the right methodologies are kept in place to tackle the wide range of problems that contribute to a person's substance misuse such as mental health, unemployment, housing and physical health.

"The current momentum must be continued so that those 27,969 who are still in treatment have a better chance of turning their lives around too," he said.

Hackers crack open mobile network

31 December 2010 Last updated at 10:49 Security researchers have shown how to eavesdrop on any GSM call Mobile calls and texts made on any GSM network can be eavesdropped upon using four cheap phones and open source software, say security researchers.

Karsten Nohl and Sylvain Munaut demonstrated their eavesdropping toolkit at the Chaos Computer Club Congress (CCC) in Berlin.

The work builds on earlier research that has found holes in many parts of the most widely used mobile technology.

The pair spent a year putting together the parts of the eavesdropping toolkit.

"Now there's a path from your telephone number to me finding you and listening to your calls," Mr Nohl told BBC News. "The whole way."

He said many of the pieces in the eavesdropping toolkit already existed thanks to work by other security researchers but there was one part the pair had to create themselves.

"The one piece that completed the chain was the ability to record data off the air," he said.

In a demonstration at the CCC, the pair took attendees through all the steps that led from locating a particular phone to seizing its unique ID, then leap-frogging from that to getting hold of data swapped between a handset and a base station as calls are made and texts sent.

Key to grabbing the data from the air were cheap Motorola phones which can have their onboard software swapped for an open source alternative.

"We used the cheap Motorola telephones because a description of their firmware leaked to the internet," he said.

This led to the creation of open source alternative firmware that, he said, has its "filters" removed so it could see all the data being broadcast by a base station.

The eavesdropping work builds on earlier work to list GSM encryption keys

This allows attackers to home in on the data they need to eavesdrop, said Mr Nohl. The encryption system that scrambles this data can be defeated using a huge list of encryption keys, called a rainbow table, that Mr Nohl generated in a separate research project.

"Any GSM call is fair game," he said.

GSM is the name of the technology used on the vast majority of mobile phone networks around the world. The GSMA, which represents operators and phone makers, estimates that there are more than five billion GSM mobiles in use around the world.

The GSMA has not responded to requests for comment about the research.

Playing around

Simeon Coney, a spokesman for mobile security firm Adaptive Mobile, said the work looked fairly thorough.

"Especially interesting is how the attack is aimed at a specific target phone, which could lead to malicious interest of high value targets," he added.

"This isn't an attack that is today readily repeatable yet by the anyone unfamiliar with the underlying technology," he said. "However, it does illustrate the manners in which the mobile phone system could be compromised in a focussed attack in less protected markets."

Mr Nohl said that before now commercial equipment that could spy on calls cost upwards of £35,000. The kit demonstrated at the Berlin event cost far less than that, he said. For instance, the Motorola phones used to grab data cost only 10 euros (£9) each.

Despite showing off the entire eavesdropping kit, there were no plans to release all of it for others to use, said Mr Nohl.

However, recreating the missing parts would not be difficult for a tech savvy amateur, he added.

"I expect people to do it for the fun of doing it."

Mr Nohl said the motivation for carrying out the research was to create awareness around the problem and perhaps prompt operators to improve security.

A few simple steps could make it much harder for eavesdroppers, he said.

"Raising their awareness is the most likely outcome, but the technical changes would be better."

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