LTE Network Automation Under Threat

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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