Threats and Countermeasures in GSM Networks
Valer BOCAN2006, Journal of Networks
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
Mobile networks not only provide great benefits to their users but they also introduce inherent security issues. With respect to security, the emerging risks of denial of service (DOS) attacks will evolve into a critical danger as the availability of mobile networks becomes more and more important for the modern information society. This paper outlines a critical flaw in GSM networks which opens the avenue for distributed denial of service attacks. We propose a way to mitigate the attacks by adding minimal authentication to the GSM channel assignment protocol.
Related papers
Mitigating denial of service threats in GSM networks
First International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES'06), 2006
Mobile networks not only provide great benefits to their users but they also introduce inherent security issues. With respect to security, the emerging risks of denial of service (DOS) attacks will evolve into a critical danger as the availability of mobile networks becomes more and more important for the modern information society. This paper outlines a critical flaw in GSM networks which opens the avenue for distributed denial of service attacks. We propose a way to mitigate the attacks by adding minimal authentication to the GSM channel assignment protocol.
A Review of Security Attacks on the GSM Standard
The Global Systems for Mobile communications (GSM) is the most widespread mobile communication technology existing nowadays. Despite being a mature technology, its introduction dates back to the late eighties, it suffers from several security vulnerabilities, which have been targeted by many attacks aimed to break the underlying communication protocol. Most of these attacks focuses on the A5/1 algorithm used to protect over-the-air communication between the two parties of a phone call. This algorithm has been superseded by new and more secure algorithms. However, it is still in use in the GSM networks as a fallback option, thus still putting at risk the security of the GSM based conversations. The objective of this work is to review some of the most relevant results in this field and discuss their practical feasibility. To this end, we consider not only the contributions coming from the canonical scientific literature but also those that have been proposed in a more informal context, such as during hacker conferences
Security Issues and Attacks on the GSM Standard: a Review
The Global Systems for Mobile communications (GSM) is actually the most widespread mobile communication technology existing nowadays. Despite being a mature technology, its introduction dates back to the late eighties, it suffers from several security vulnerabilities, which have been targeted by many attacks aimed to break the underlying communication protocol. Most of these attacks focuses on the A5/1 algorithm used to protect over-the-air communication between the two parties of a phone call. This algorithm has been superseded by new and more secure algorithms. However, it is still in use in the GSM networks as a fallback option, thus still putting at risk the security of the GSM based conversations. The objective of this work is to review some of the most relevant results in this field and discuss their practical feasibility. To this end, we consider not only the contributions coming from the canonical scientific literature but also those that have been proposed in a more informal context, such as during hacker conferences.
SAKA: A Secure Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for GSM Networks
2013
Although nowadays we are running in the 3rd generation of cellular networks but most of the service providers are also providing the services of 2nd generation cellular networks. The Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) protocol is proposed to solve the security issues and vulnerabilities found in first generation of cellular communication which was based on analog communication system. GSM system is still vulnerable to redirection attack, man-in-the-middle attack and impersonation attack. An intruder can apply these attacks to impersonate the network or bill mischarge the users. In this paper, we propose a new secure GSM protocol called ''SAKA'' to prevent GSM networks from various security issues and attacks. This proposed protocol improves the drawbacks of the original GSM authentication protocol including: not supporting mutual authentication; large bandwidth consumption between VLR and HLR; storage space overhead in VLR; and overloaded HLR with authentication of mobile stations. This protocol also eliminates the need of synchronization between a mobile station MS and its home network HLR. The SAKA protocol generates minimum communication overhead as compare to all other existing and proposed GSM protocols. Authors claim that on an average the SAKA protocol has reduced 56 % of the bandwidth consumption during the authentication process which is the maximum reduction of bandwidth by any GSM protocol.
Security in GSM Networks
International Journal of Computer Applications, 2020
Wireless medium is open to all. Hence it is always acceptable to threats and attacks. GSM being a wireless network is always prone to the unauthorized access to the network and entrustment to the privacy and confidentiality of the users. Therefore, the GSM provides security measures to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of the users to ensure that only registered and authorized users get the access to the network. This paper briefly presents the security measures of GSM technology. The study is enriched with a general overview of GSM protection and the algorithms that are mainly used in A3, A5 and A8. Author’s also discussed the authentication and encryption methods provided by GSM. A3 for MS authentication algorithm. A5 for powerful over wind voice privacy algorithms. A8 for voice privacy key generation algorithm.
Security in the GSM network
The GSM network is the biggest IT network on the Earth. Most of their users are connected to this network 24h a day but not many knows anything abut GSM security, how it works and how good it is. Most people blindly trust GSM security and send by the network not only theirs very private conversations and text messages but also their current location. This paper will describe how that information is guarded in 2G networks and how much of it an attacker can access without our permission or knowledge.
A Denial of Service Attack to UMTS Networks Using SIM-less Devices
IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2014
One of the fundamental security elements in cellular networks is the authentication procedure performed by means of the Subscriber Identity Module that is required to grant access to network services and hence protect the network from unauthorized usage. Nonetheless, in this work we present a new kind of denial of service attack based on properly crafted SIM-less devices that, without any kind of authentication and by exploiting some specific features and performance bottlenecks of the UMTS network attachment process, are potentially capable of introducing significant service degradation up to disrupting large sections of the cellular network coverage. The knowledge of this attack can be exploited by several applications both in security and in network equipment manufacturing sectors.
Questioning the Feasibility of UMTS-GSM Interworking Attacks
Wireless Personal Communications, 2012
Recently, Ahmadian and Salimi presented and analyzed three different attacks that can be performed in UMTS-GSM interworking networks: (i) a real-time eavesdropping attack, (ii) an offline eavesdropping attack, and (iii) an impersonation attack. In this letter we question the feasibility of these attacks. In particular, we pinpoint and analyze that these attacks are based on some erroneous and misleading assumptions that the authors have made regarding the security functionality of the UMTS-GSM interworking networks. Based on this analysis, we deduce that these three attacks cannot be performed.
Survey on Threats and Attacks on Mobile Networks
IEEE Access, 2016
Since the 1G of mobile technology, mobile wireless communication systems have continued to evolve, bringing into the network architecture new interfaces and protocols, as well as unified services, high data capacity of data transmission, and packet-based transmission (4G). This evolution has also introduced new vulnerabilities and threats, which can be used to launch attacks on different network components, such as the access network and the core network. These drawbacks stand as a major concern for the security and the performance of mobile networks, since various types of attacks can take down the whole network and cause a denial of service, or perform malicious activities. In this survey, we review the main security issues in the access and core network (vulnerabilities and threats) and provide a classification and categorization of attacks in mobile network. In addition, we analyze major attacks on 4G mobile networks and corresponding countermeasures and current mitigation solutions, discuss limits of current solutions, and highlight open research areas.
Related papers
SECURITY ASPECTS IN GSM AND ITS FLAWS
2000
Mobile communications in the past decade has changed the scenario of communications and is termed as the key services of the digital revolution. A very little is known about how the communication exactly takes place between users accessing the mobile network across the globe. Even less is known about the security measures and protection behind the system. The cell phone is slowly turning into a handheld computer which is capable to do a work of a computer and for that reason only, the security of mobile communication becomes an area of concern .The security of the network has been the area which needs attention as we cannot design a system which can be safe to the external attacks.
A contemporary foreword on GSM Security
Infrastructure Security, 2002
This article contains a current outline of the GSM system security, with focus on the air interface protocol. It presents the terminology and describes the GSM security operation, including its principles and features. This document also discusses the effectiveness of GSM authentication and the strength of GSM encryption. It includes therefore the most significant physical and cryptanalytic attacks on GSM security mechanisms, such as the up to date optical fault induction and partitioning attacks. GSM security features retained and enhanced for the 3G Security and further applications in network (Internet) remote access are also contemplated. This article aims primarily at contributing to a progressive research in mobile systems security and at reviewing the security solutions implemented in this area for further applications.
Securing Mobile Devices from DoS Attacks
Today mobile devices are increasingly being used to access data services in addition to the voice communications. However such devices have limited resources to enforce strong security measures and hence they are easily vulnerable to attacks. In this paper we propose techniques for securing mobile devices from denial of service attacks. We will make use of the IPSec protocol for secure traceback and preventing the attack upstream. Finally we present the implementation and performance analysis of our model.
Retrofitting Mutual Authentication to GSM Using RAND Hijacking
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016
As has been widely discussed, the GSM mobile telephony system only offers unilateral authentication of the mobile phone to the network; this limitation permits a range of attacks. While adding support for mutual authentication would be highly beneficial, changing the way GSM serving networks operate is not practical. This paper proposes a novel modification to the relationship between a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) and its home network which allows mutual authentication without changing any of the existing mobile infrastructure, including the phones; the only necessary changes are to the authentication centres and the SIMs. This enhancement, which could be deployed piecemeal in a completely transparent way, not only addresses a number of serious vulnerabilities in GSM but is also the first proposal for enhancing GSM authentication that possesses such transparency properties.
Securing wireless mobile nodes from distributed denial-of-service attacks
The current mobile devices have become smart and are increasingly being used for conducting business and personal activities. Also, there is increasing number of attacks targeting such mobile devices. The term mobile botnet refers to group of mobile devices that are compromised and controlled by the attacker that can be used for generating distributed denial-of-service attacks. The security protocols that have been proposed for wireless and mobile networks have several weaknesses that can be exploited by the attacker to obtain unauthorized access and generate attacks. Also, there is growing number of malicious applications that are aimed to compromise smartphones and using them for generating different types of attacks. In this paper, we propose techniques to counteract distributed denial-of-service attacks on wireless mobile devices. We describe the operation and architectural components of our model. We will show that our model is able to efficiently deal with the attacks by dropping the attack traffic before it targets the victim mobile node, can prevent the attack traffic at the upstream nodes, and also deal with the attack cases that involve mobility of the attacking and victim nodes.
Solutions to the GSM Security Weaknesses
2008 The Second International Conference on Next Generation Mobile Applications, Services, and Technologies, 2008
Recently, the mobile industry has experienced an extreme increment in number of its users. The GSM network with the greatest worldwide number of users succumbs to several security vulnerabilities. Although some of its security problems are addressed in its upper generations, there are still many operators using 2G systems. This paper briefly presents the most important security flaws of the GSM network and its transport channels. It also provides some practical solutions to improve the security of currently available 2G systems.
NPA: Protocol for Secure Communications in GSM Cellular Network
in the proceedings of The 10th Annual IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC-2013), Wireless Communication Track, 2013
With its attractive features like providing access to users at anytime and anywhere in the world, mobile communication has been very popular among the users and service providers. However, despite of several advantages, mobile communication has also been facing many security problems. 2G GSM architecture has several problems including unidirectional authentication and extra storage is needed for VLR to store authentication information. Existing algorithms A3, A8 and A5 are also vulnerable to various attacks like man-in-middle attack, reply attack, DoS attack, interleave attack etc. This paper deals with the problems of original 2G GSM architecture and attacks in existing algorithms. Authors propose three new algorithms NPA3, NPA8 and NPA5 that prevent GSM from various attacks. With these algorithms and change in mechanism, mutual authentication is provided between MS and BS and there is no need to have extra storage for VLR. At the end, conclusion and future work is summarized.
GSM Security Approach towards the Survey and Evaluations of Presents Situation
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is the most widely used cellular technology in the world. Approximately 800 million people around the world are using GSM for different purposes, but mostly for voice communication and SMS. For GSM, like many other widely used systems, security is crucial. The security involves mechanisms used to protect the different shareholders, like subscribers and service providers. The aspects of security that this report covers are mainly anonymity, authentication and confidentiality. The important aspects of the system that need protection are described, along with the implementation of mechanisms used for the protection. It appears that many of the very valuable aspects of GSM can be attacked. The anonymity of a GSM user is compromised resulting in the attacker being able to observe the time, rate, length, sources or destinations of e g calls. Even tracking a subscriber's movements becomes possible. However, a passive attack is not sufficient to perform these attacks. The attacker needs to mount an active attack using equipment offering base station functionality. Authentication is a crucial aspect of a wireless communication system due to the nature of the medium used, i e the radio link that is available to everyone and not only the legitimate entities. Even the authentication mechanisms are attacked. It is possible to clone a subscription either by having physical access to the smart card or over the air interface. Cloning a subscription over the air requires base station functionality.
Security in Mobile Telecommunication Networks
Wireless and Mobile Network Security, 2009
With the increase in popularity of mobile phones over landlines, the mobile telecommunication network has now become the primary source of communication for not only business and pleasure, but also for the many life and mission critical services such as E-911. These networks have become highly attractive targets to adversaries due to their heavy usage and their numerous vulnerabilities that may be easily exploited to cause major network outages.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.