Fixing Insecure Cellular System Information Broadcasts For Good
Alexander J. Ross, Bradley Reaves, Yomna Nasser, Gil Cukierman, Roger Piqueras Jover · 2024
Cellular networks are essential everywhere, and securing them is increasingly important as attacks against them become more prevalent and powerful. All cellular network generations bootstrap new radio connections with unauthenticated System Information Blocks (SIBs), which provide critical parameters needed to identify and connect to the network. Many cellular network attacks require exploiting SIBs. Authenticating these messages would eliminate whole classes of attack, from spoofed emergency alerts to fake base stations.