Print

Mail

wiki links

Researchers warn hackers may attack cellular networks

Malicious hackers could take down cellular networks in large cities by inundating their popular text-messaging services with the equivalent of spam, said computer security researchers, who will announce the findings of their research yesterday.

Such an attack is possible, the researchers say, because cellphone companies provide the text message service to their networks in a way that could allow an attacker who jams the message system to disable the voice network as well.

And because the message services are accessible via the Internet, cellular networks are open to the "denial of service" attacks that occur regularly online, in which computers send so many messages or commands to a target that the rogue data blocks other machines from connecting.

By pushing 165 messages a second into the network, said Patrick McDaniel, a professor of computer science and engineering at Pennsylvania State University and the lead researcher on the paper, "you can congest all of Manhattan."

McDaniel and the other faculty author, Thomas La Porta, have extensive experience in computer security, including work in the telecommunications industry. The findings were to be released yesterday at Penn State, and as a formal research paper at a computer security conference next month.

Cellular companies acknowledge that such attacks are possible, but add that they have developed systems to prevent effective ones.

"If you're not prepared, that could happen," said Brian Scott, senior manager for wireless messaging operations for Sprint. "If you are prepared and you have means in place to identify, detect and mitigate that, it's not as much of a concern."

Other specialists said such systems would face many of the same obstacles as those that try to block denial of service attacks, one of the thorniest problems in countering hackers.

"The solutions don't tend to be very elegant" in the Internet world, said Gary McGraw, chief technical officer of Cigital, a security consultant to the computing and telecommunications industries.

"And I believe it will be the same thing on cellphones."

In their research, the authors concluded that all major cellular networks are vulnerable, and a single computer with a cable modem could do the job.

The researchers do not believe that anyone has disrupted cellphone networks in this way, though it appears to have occurred by accident in other nations.

McGraw, the chief technical officer of Cigital, said the goal of research like the Penn State paper was not to help hackers scale new heights, but to alert companies to problems before someone exploited them.

"It has to be done very responsibly and very carefully," he said. "You don't want people to panic, but you do want them to sit up take notice and do something about it."
This story has been viewed 1654 times.