Sorry for the long absence .
While I'm writing about phones (it's a big topic, but I think you'll like it), I decided to write an article about mobile phones📱 .
More precisely about attacks in SS7 (in 4g or LTE in particular) 📡
Yes many people say "ss7 is obsolete" although in practice it is used all quite often.
Especially in cis countries, however, not only them.
The global SS7 market is projected to reach $597 million by 2028, up from $531.2 million in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate of 1.7% from 2022 to 2028.
And it's still in its prime (so to speak) , in many regions of Europe, even in Asia. Here is a more detailed article about the ss7 market: link
For this reason it would be reasonable to talk about his vulnerabilities, especially the
IMSI hijacking and dos attacks.🎯From the above posts on this subject (
if you have not read them, go to #ss7) you remember already what ss7 is and how it works.Now we should talk about the attack itself on its vulnerabilities
The first thing I want to talk about is something like eavesdropping .For the attacker can eavesdrop on the subscriber's data, send/change text messages to the victim, acting like a MiTM . The victim is completely unaware of the attack, in short (more details will be in one of the articles below in the archive) and in a post in the aftermath .
The attacker establishes a bridge between the two callers and routes all calls to his monitoring system. This uses
MAP messages and the call forwarding feature.
The target user is usually unaware of this attack. And the attacker can route the victim's calls to the monitoring system at the level of MAP messages SS7.
One reason for this, is the lack of encryption on the network which is "handy" for these attacks.
Then there are attacks where the attack is performed with the MSC. The goal is to obtain text messages or bank account information from the victim and other similar attacks. USSDs are used to obtain information about a bank for example. The account of the victim can be misappropriated for example. There are also DOS attacks .💣The main motive of DOS is to deny service to a certain subscriber.
When a user
receives information about a new location and registers in the last MSC/VLR, it first makes a request to update the MAP in the HLR. After checking the received HLR gives ISD command to the new MSC/VLR and DSD, CL as well as to our old MSC/VLR.
By doing this, the attacker can change the allowed services of the victim, for example, prohibit the subscriber to make phone calls, send SMS, or even remove him from the connected VLR subscriber.
This does not seem as damaging, but can help more sophisticated attacks afterwards.🫥#lte #network #ss7 #mobile #attacks #dos
