Ciphering Not Provided by Operator. Insecure Transmission" After Upgrading to R8BE001

[kamaln]

Hello friends:

Yesterday I flashed my SE w580i to R8BE001 (MAIN, FS and Custom Pack). I used the following...

1. W580_R8BE001_MAIN_GENERIC_LA_RED52.rar
2. W580_R8BE001_FS_S_ASIA_LEVAN_RED52.rar
3. W580i_CDA102774_66_R4A_Customized_India.zip

Everything is fine but now I'm getting the following annoying error whenever I make or receive a call (once the call is in progress). My handset is a normal retail handset and bought from a Sony Ericsson shop and NOT an operator branded one.

Error message: Ciphering not provided by operator. Insecure transmission

but the call continues. I remember getting this error with my earlier firmware (R6BC002) but only once. That time I thought that particular BTS (base transciever station) did not provide the encryption. But after this upgrade, I'm getting this error regardless of the place (any BTS I'm connected to) I'm in.

What could be the problem.
1. Is the firmware I flashed is missing some encryption cetificates that it is not able to encrypt?
2. Does the new firmware has better encryption protocol not yet supported by my operator (but anyways it should be backward compatible)?
3. Is this error should be of concern?

Thanks in advance.

[kamaln]

Just found some references to "enable-a5-2-ciphering" to be placed in customization.xml while doing some googling...

"If you got your own custpack, add this line in <network> </network> tags, near start of CUSTOMIZE.XML file in your customisation:
<enable-a5-2-ciphering>true</enable-a5-2-ciphering>"

But it seems opposite than my problem. As per the error message I'm getting it seems that my phone tries to enable the encryption but the operator is not supporting it. So it is already enabled in my phone. I opened my customization.xml and there was no such line so should I assume that the default value for a5-2 ciphering is true if it is not provided.

If I want to enable it know, would just modifying existing customization.xml in my phone and restarting my phone will turn it on?

I tried using my friend's Vodafone SIM and no such error comes with his SIM. But then it's not possible that AIRTEL stopped ciphering since I flashed as no such error was coming prior to the upgrade.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[hot_spark]

Did u flash back to ur previous FW in order to check whether the problem persists or not??

[kamaln]

Ok, I checked with various other SIMs, same (mine) and different operators, prepaid and postpaid both. And the error comes with ONLY my SIM. This leads me into thinking something got changed in the SIM during the flash operation.
Is it possible?

My theory is that SIM is (might be) mapped to some memory region and during the flash operation that memory contents got changed.
I also got some loose references that SIM contains VARIABLES to indicate the user whether the ciphering is on or not. So it is quite possible that that area within the SIM got changed during the flash operation.

I have now bought a new SIM from my operator (they changed it for free :))
and it's working fine now with no error messages. So my advice to all guys here: remove your SIM while flashing your phone, probably use an old available SIM just in case.

But the only query that still remains is that whether the ciphering is now on or not. Nokia seems to have something like NetMonitor that tells this and SE I think has an equivalent Tech Mode but I didn't find if it tells you the ciphering status.

Anyways I'm content with the thinking that my flash operation went all fine with no annoying error messages.

Thanks to all you guys for all the good work and help.

[onlyone]

nothing bad happends to the sim during flashing
"I remember getting this error with my earlier firmware (R6BC002) but only once"
therefore, go to your provider and change the sim with a new one

[archanad]

Hello friend, me also using same model (w580).. im also getting same error "cipher is allowed by ur provider,insecure transmission"....

Can u tell me whether u cleared that problem or not???? Tell me the solution too....