Courtesy of IEEE Spectrum, news of a new project by H4RDW4RE, a Californian security company, has surfaced.  H4RDW4RE is looking to crack GSM phone security using the same methods SETI does to search for extraterrestrial life.

While the 64 bit encryption used on GSM networks has always been known as weak, no company has specifically plotted to crack it.  This will require massive computing power, so H4RDW4RE will be splitting the data into millions of chunks, and sending them out to users running software on computers to analyze each chunk independently.  Once the key is cracked, H4RDW4RE hopes it will force GSM based vendors to up the security to a 128 bit system, which they should have done long ago.

Full story: Open-Source Effort to Hack GSM