Wednesday, 4 January 2012

GSM Security Feature, Threats and Solution

Security feature:
Signaling and Data Confidentiality
The SIM contains the ciphering key generating algorithm which is used to produce the 64-bit ciphering key. The ciphering key is computed by applying the same random number used in the authentication process to the ciphering key generating algorithm with the individual subscriber authentication key. The ciphering key is used to encrypt and decrypt the data between the MS and BS. An additional level of security is provided by having the means to change the ciphering key, making the system more resistant to eavesdropping. The ciphering key may be changed at regular intervals as required by network design and security considerations.

Threats
       Eavesdropping. This is the capability that the intruder eavesdrops signalling and data connections associated with other users. The required equipment is a modified MS.
       Impersonation of a user. This is the capability whereby the intruder sends signalling and/or user data to the network, in an attempt to make the network believe they originate from the target user. The required equipment is again a modified MS.
       Impersonation of the network. This is the capability whereby the intruder sends signalling and/or user data to the target user, in an attempt to make the target user believe they originate from a genuine network. The required equipment is modified BTS.
Solution:
Fast and Quality Network Adjustment: Full reuse of legacy infrastructures and associated facilities help operators to reduce CAPEX and civil works. Automatic professional network planning & optimization and network adjustment tools shorten network construction dramatically.

4 comments:

  1. From my research, i think that the biggest threat could be from DOS attacks which attacks have no intentions of attaining the user's information, but would still greatly affect and create a great impact to the user.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with WenDe, the most common threat should be DoS attack. It is ranked top in the GSM possible attacks, so I think you should mention that in your research.

    Just to give you some ideas. DoS attack is an attempt to make the network resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person, or multiple people to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely.

    ReplyDelete
  3. In my post I also had eavesdropping as one of my threats. It is indeed one of the most common threats in GSM. Another one is also Cloning.
    The most common threat is still eavesdropping and cloning.

    - Cloning
    Another threat is cloning. This threat allows imposters to easily pick up someone’s phone identity over the air. Imposters can then reprogram their own phone with the person’s identity
    and cause all the imposters’ calls to be charged to the victim’s bill.

    jeremy lim 1005983J

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello ruo han, your post about GSM is ok, but for GPRS maybe you can add a bit more. To add on to your GPRS threat, this is what I found on my research


    • DNS Flood
    – DNS servers on your network will be flooded with correctly or malformed DNS queries or other traffic, thereby denying subscribers the ability to find the right GGSN to use as an external gateway.
    • GTP Flood
    – SGSNs and GGSNs are flooded with GTP traffic that causes them to spend their CPU cycles processing illegitimate data. This could stop subscribers from being able to roam, to pass data out to external networks via the Gi, or from being able to GPRS attach to the network at all.

    ReplyDelete