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A team of researchers discovered a serious vulnerability in the LTE standard that could be exploited to intercept traffic and direct users to infected sites. The exploit aLTEr requires a hardware device (cost about $ 4000) and a distance of less than 2 km from the victim. A similar attack, although improbable, is not impossible to put into practice.
The LTE (Long Term Evolution) standard was developed to correct many of the security issues of the previous GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), using some new features such as mutual authentication between users and radio stations. radio base. However, there is no form of cryptography that guarantees the integrity of the data. You can then manipulate the IP addresses in an encrypted packet and perform an attack " DNS Spoofing ". DNS queries are intercepted by a fake DNS server and sent to an incorrect IP address
The vulnerability is due to a design choice so there is no way to solve it by a simple patch. The only protection against exploits similar to aLTEr is to visit only sites that use the HTTP Strict Transport Security and DNS security extensions. The attacker must be near the target and use a device simulating the LTE network. Such an attack is usually directed against specific targets (politicians, journalists, directors) to direct traffic to infected sites or to discover the sites visited.
The GSM badociation said that similar scenarios are unlikely, especially because mobile operators use fraud detection systems. In all cases, the protection of the integrity of the traffic and information is provided by the 5G standard. However, researchers point out that this protection is optional based on current specifications.
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