What is it about?
This work highlights the significance of synchronization in cellular networks and how attackers can capitalize on it to come up with different classes of attacks. In particular, the random access procedure which allows mobile devices to have entry into a network is chosen for investigation. During the random access procedure, the base station sends out a timing advance information to correct the transmission delays of all mobile devices as some may be nearer or farther from the base station. This timing advance information is important to align all the transmissions at the base station for processing. Because at the start of the random access procedure mobile phones select preambles from a set of 64, collision may occur at the base station and it is unable to distinguish between the number of mobile devices that sent the same preamble so it sends out a single respond that contains the same timing advance info. The malicious attacker causes denial of service attack when it knows this information. How does it do that? The paper provides step by step approach.
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Why is it important?
It is important because security surrounding the random access procedure has not really been investigated. Besides, the random access procedure will be used in future mobile networks and if these vulnerabilities are not investigated, the futureG networks will inherit them.
Perspectives
This work will not only bring attention to issues concerning how mobile devices get synchronized to the network. It also provides an insight into how we cannot put limitations on attackers when we look at the wireless network communication system.
Edward Kwao
George Mason University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Random Access Failure Attack on Cellular Networks: Forcing Timing Advance Misalignment, May 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3643833.3656125.
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