Researchers discovered major Flaws in 4G LTE networks

A research conducted by the Academics from Purdue University and the University of Iowa have revealed new security issues in core protocols which empowers 4G LTE mobile networks all over the world. These flaws in 4G LTE Protocols have created room for the attackers to spy on the victim’s text messages, phone calls, track their locations, etc.

The researchers have listed a total of ten different attacks in a research paper which broke out to be a breaking IT Security news. They developed a testing framework to detect these major vulnerabilities in LTE radios and networks. This research group tested eight out of ten attacks using the SIM cards from the four large US carriers. They demonstrated how to conduct an authentication relay attacks which allows an attacker to bypass the network authentication and portray to be the victim’s device.

Any cybercriminal or an attacker can access the 4G LTE Protocol and portray themselves to be the victim. This research led to the discovery of potential dangers which can exploit these vulnerabilities. An attacker can easily imitate the victim’s device which will deliver misleading results for criminal investigations by manipulating the genuine location information of the victim. This can be used by the crooks to their best advantage to generate fake evidence by way of 4G LTE Protocols attacks.

These vulnerabilities can also be exploited by the attackers by injecting fake warning messages, Amber alerts and emergency notifications in the 4G LTE networks. One of the major factors tested by the researchers is that a major US carrier never uses encryption for Control Panel messages and creates room for the attackers to exploit the network vulnerabilities and spy on the victim’s SMS and other confidential information.

Don’t panic if you are on 4G LTE network because the US carriers have already acknowledged all the persistent flows in the 4G LTE Protocols and have addressed them without any delay. The thing which you really need to know as a user is that an open source 4G LTE Protocol software can be bought by anyone to carry out such attacks.