Mobile Network Security | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A team of academic researchers—who previously made the headlines earlier this year for uncovering severe security issues in the 4G LTE and 5G networks —today presented a new attack called ' ReVoLTE ,' that could let remote attackers break the encryption used by VoLTE voice calls and spy on targeted phone calls. The attack doesn't exploit any flaw in the Voice over LTE (VoLTE) protocol; instead, it leverages weak implementation of the LTE mobile network by most telecommunication providers in practice, allowing an attacker to eavesdrop on the encrypted phone calls made by targeted victims. VoLTE or Voice over Long Term Evolution protocol is a standard high-speed wireless communication for mobile phones and data terminals, including Internet of things (IoT) devices and wearables, deploying 4G LTE radio access technology. The crux of the problem is that most mobile operators often use the same keystream for two subsequent calls within one radio connection to encrypt th

High impact vulnerabilities in modern communication protocol used by mobile network operators (MNOs) can be exploited to intercept user data and carry out impersonation, fraud, and denial of service (DoS) attacks, cautions a newly published research. The findings are part of a new Vulnerabilities in LTE and 5G Networks 2020 report published by London-based cybersecurity firm Positive Technologies last week. "This paper encompasses the results of security assessments performed during the 2018–2019 timeframe on behalf of 28 telecom operators in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America." Called the GPRS Tunnelling Protocol ( GTP ), the affected Internet Protocol (IP)-based communications standard defines a set of rules governing data traffic over 2G, 3G, and 4G networks. It also forms the basis for GPRS core network and its successor Evolved Packet Core ( EPC ), thus making it possible for users to keep connected to the Internet while moving from one place to the ot