4G LTE vulnerabilities | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A group of academics from Ruhr University Bochum and New York University Abu Dhabi have uncovered security flaws in 4G LTE and 5G networks that could potentially allow hackers to impersonate users on the network and even sign up for paid subscriptions on their behalf. The impersonation attack — named " IMPersonation Attacks in 4G NeTworks " (or IMP4GT ) — exploits the mutual authentication method used by the mobile phone and the network's base station to verify their respective identities to manipulate data packets in transit. "The IMP4GT attacks exploit the missing integrity protection for user data, and a reflection mechanism of the IP stack mobile operating system. We can make use of the reflection mechanism to build an encryption and decryption oracle. Along with the lack of integrity protection, this allows to inject arbitrary packets and to decrypt packets," the researchers explained. The research was presented at the Network Distributed System Se...

If your mobile carrier offers LTE, also known as the 4G network, you need to beware as your network communication can be hijacked remotely. A team of researchers has discovered some critical weaknesses in the ubiquitous LTE mobile device standard that could allow sophisticated hackers to spy on users' cellular networks, modify the contents of their communications, and even can re-route them to malicious or phishing websites. LTE, or Long Term Evolution, is the latest mobile telephony standard used by billions of people designed to bring many security improvements over the predecessor standard known as Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications. However, multiple security flaws have been discovered over the past few years, allowing attackers to intercept user's communications, spy on user phone calls and text messages, send fake emergency alerts, spoof location of the device and knock devices entirely offline. 4G LTE Network Vulnerabilities Now, security researchers...

The problem is simple: all breaches start with initial access, and initial access comes down to two primary attack vectors – credentials and devices. This is not news; every report you can find on the threat landscape depicts the same picture.  The solution is more complex. For this article, we'll focus on the device threat vector. The risk they pose is significant, which is why device management tools like Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) are essential components of an organization's security infrastructure. However, relying solely on these tools to manage device risk actually creates a false sense of security. Instead of the blunt tools of device management, organizations are looking for solutions that deliver device trust . Device trust provides a comprehensive, risk-based approach to device security enforcement, closing the large gaps left behind by traditional device management solutions. Here are 5 of those limitations and how to ov...