Hackers of India

LTE Network Automation Under Threat

By  Ravishankar Borgaonkar   Altaf Shaik  on 08 Aug 2018 @ Blackhat

Presentation Material

Abstract

The control and management of mobile networks is shifting from manual to automatic in order to boost performance and efficiency and reduce expenditures. Especially, base stations in today’s 4G/LTE networks can automatically configure and operate themselves which is technically referred to as Self Organizing Networks (SON). Additionally, they can auto-tune themselves by learning from their surrounding base stations. This talk inspects the consequences of operating a rogue base station in an automated 4G/LTE network. We exploit the weaknesses we discovered in 4G/LTE mobile phones and SON protocols to inject malicious packets into the network. We demonstrate several attacks against the network and discuss mitigation from the mobile network operators perspective.

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The speaker discusses the issue of rogue base stations and their potential to disrupt mobile networks. They propose three solutions to mitigate this problem:

  1. Authenticating broadcast messages from base stations to prevent impersonation.
  2. Verifying measurement reports sent by phones to the network to ensure location accuracy.
  3. Implementing built-in baseband intelligence in phones to detect and respond to rogue base stations.

The speaker emphasizes that self-organizing networks will play a crucial role in 5G deployments, but they need to be secured against these types of attacks. They highlight the lack of verification of information received from phones and the need for multiple parameters to make informed network decisions.

In the Q&A session, the speaker is asked if app-level solutions can be implemented on Android and iOS devices to prevent rogue base station attacks. The speaker believes that this responsibility lies with the baseband manufacturers rather than the operating system developers, as opening up access to the baseband could introduce new security threats.

Another question raises concerns about data protection and the potential for personal data loss due to rogue base stations. The speaker acknowledges that while denial of service is a concern, the impact on individual users’ data is a more significant issue. However, they clarify that these attacks are typically targeted at the base station rather than specific users, affecting all phones in the area.