New Sni5Gect Attack Crashes Phones and Downgrades 5G to 4G without Rogue Base Station
Aug 26, 2025
Vulnerability / Mobile Security
A team of academics has devised a novel attack that can be used to downgrade a 5G connection to a lower generation without relying on a rogue base station (gNB). The attack , per the ASSET (Automated Systems SEcuriTy) Research Group at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), relies on a new open-source software toolkit named Sni5Gect (short for "Sniffing 5G Inject") that's designed to sniff unencrypted messages sent between the base station and the user equipment (UE, i.e., a phone) and inject messages to the target UE over-the-air. The framework can be used to carry out attacks such as crashing the UE modem, downgrading to earlier generations of networks, fingerprinting, or authentication bypass, according to Shijie Luo, Matheus Garbelini, Sudipta Chattopadhyay, and Jianying Zhou. "As opposed to using a rogue base station, which limits the practicality of many 5G attacks, SNI5GECT acts as a third-party in the communication, silently sniffs me...