LTEInspector: A Systematic Approach for Adversarial Testing of 4G LTE

Syed Rafiul Hussain, Omar Chowdhury, Shagufta Mehnaz, Elisa Bertino

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

184 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the security and privacy of the three critical procedures of the 4G LTE protocol (i.e., attach, detach, and paging), and in the process, uncover potential design flaws of the protocol and unsafe practices employed by the stakeholders. For exposing vulnerabilities, we propose a model-based testing approach LTEInspector which lazily combines a symbolic model checker and a cryptographic protocol verifier in the symbolic attacker model. Using LTEInspector, we have uncovered 10 new attacks along with 9 prior attacks, categorized into three abstract classes (i.e., security, user privacy, and disruption of service), in the three procedures of 4G LTE. Notable among our findings is the authentication relay attack that enables an adversary to spoof the location of a legitimate user to the core network without possessing appropriate credentials. To ensure that the exposed attacks pose real threats and are indeed realizable in practice, we have validated 8 of the 10 new attacks and their accompanying adversarial assumptions through experimentation in a real testbed.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication25th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS 2018
PublisherThe Internet Society
ISBN (Electronic)1891562495, 9781891562495
DOIs
StatePublished - 2018
Event25th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS 2018 - San Diego, United States
Duration: Feb 18 2018Feb 21 2018

Publication series

Name25th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS 2018

Conference

Conference25th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, NDSS 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Diego
Period2/18/182/21/18

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality

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