Existing Cellular Networks
In this report the topic that will be discussed is of the LTE (Long Term Evolution). The long term evolution is set as the standard of the wireless high speed communication for the mobile devices and for the terminals of data. The LTE is mainly based on the UMTS/HSPA and GSM/EDGE. The sped and the capacity of this network is high than the other networks because it uses different various interfaces of the radio together with the improvements in the core network. In this the discussion will be made on the cellular networks that are existing in the current network market. All the network aspects like the communication spectrum, techniques of modulation, mechanism of medium access control, bandwidth utilization, speed of the network, bandwidth utilization, and the security techniques is going to be discussed. The architecture of the LTE/LTE-A will be explained. The attacks that are that happen on the networks will evaluated. The attack will be identified and the attacks will also be analysed in the report further.
In the current market there are various different cellular networks that are presented. The different various cellular technologies consists of GSM (Global System for Mobile), GPRS (general Packet Radio Service), EV-Do (Evolution Data Optimized), EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution), UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication Service ), DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunication), IS-136/TDMA (Digital AMPS), iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network), cdmaOne, CDMA2000 [1].
GSM: GSM or the Global system for Mobiles IS one of the standard that has been developed by the European Telecommunication Standards Institute. This is associated with describing the protocols needed by the Second Generation digital cellular networks used in the mobiles or tablets. This was developed in the year of 1991 in Finland.
EV-Do: This is the telecommunication standard used during wireless data transmission by means of the radio signals for example the Internet broadband access, This is the latest form of the CDMA2000 standard which was responsible for supporting high data rates. This can also be used along with the wireless carrier’s voice service.
EDGE: This is the digital mobile technology that is associated with allowing an improved rate of data transmission. This is also considered to be the backward-compatible extension of the GSM technology. This was first deployed in the beginning of the year 2003 by the organization Cingular in the United States.
UMTS: This is the third generation of the 3G mobile cellular system that is used by the networks by depending upon the GSM standard. This was first developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project or the 3GPP.
Communication Spectrum
DECT: This is the standard which is mainly used for the purpose of creating a cordless telephone system, which originated in Europe. In Europe thos was considered to be the universal standard which replaces all the existing cordless telephony standards.
IS-136/TDMA: TDMA is the 2G technology which is used by the digital cellular telephone communication and is associated with classifying the cellular channels into individual time slots so as to increase the amount of data which is to be carried out. This is generally defined by the IS-136 by the TIA or the Telecommunication Industries Association.
iDEN: This is the telecommunication technology that associated with providing user benefits to the trunked radio and the cellular telephone. This was also considered to be the first mobile social network. Speech compression and TDMA is used by the iDEN so as to place pore users in a provided spectral space.
CDMA2000: This is an IMT-CDMA Multi-Carrier which was developed by the ITU or the International Telecommunication Union. This is the 3G mobile wireless technology and is the world first commercial system which was launched by the SK Telecom in the year of 2000.
For the different types of networks the modulation technique is different. The 1G refers to the first generation of the cellular networks. 1G is the analogue network which is first came on the market. After the 1G the next generation that came on the market is the 2g which is the digital network.
After the 2g network more successor came as the digital network like the 3g and 4g both are better than the 2g networks in terms of modulation, speed and bandwidth allocation. 1g uses simple two way analogue communication system using the frequency [2]. 2g, 3g and the 4g networks uses the digital communication mechanism. As the generation of the cellular network is grown the speed of the network and the allocation of the bandwidth also increased with this. The speed of the different cellular network is different. The speed of the 1g network is 2.4 Kbps to 14.4 kbps. The network speed of the 2g network is 14.4 Kbps, speed of the 3g network is 3.1 Mbps and the network speed of the 4g network is 100 Mbps. Only the 1G network has the analog bandwidth. The others networks have different bandwidth like the 2g and the 3g network have the same bandwidth of 25MHz and the 4g network has the bandwidth of 100Mhz. 1g and the 2g network have the same band of frequency that is both are of narrow band [3]. The 3g network has the wide band the 4g network have ultra wide band. The bandwidth allocation is also grown with the emerging generation of the cellular networks. Risk and the security techniques associated with these networks are more or less same as these all networks are wireless.
Modulation Technique
The LTE/LTE-A is composed by the core network and the radio access network. E-UTRAN which is the radio access network, and it has came from the 3GPP UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) which is original [4]. The UMTS is known for Universal Mobile Telecommunication System. E-UTRAN is created by the evolved multiple NodeBs, those have the characteristics of the NodeBs and the most of the functions are of the UTRAN’s radio network controller. In LTE/LTE-A network, the packet switch services are handled by the IMS network like the VoLTE. The UMTS and the GSM networks support circuit switching process of the fall back. When the IMS is not employed then it can be triggered. The e-NodeB connects with the other nodes that are presented in the network. The core network of the LTE/LTE-A is called as network of the EPC. The EPC network produces the connections to the multiple heterogeneous network access which contains the 3GPP access networks, non-3GPP access networks. MME, HSS (Home Subscriber Server), SGW, Packet Data Network gateway, and policy and Charging Rules Functions are combined in the EPC [5]. The user surface and control surface is separated in the EPC. The Control surface is achieved by the Mme and the user surface is achieved by the SGW. The services provided by the HSS is for the core network of the LTE/LTE-A and the IMS network as the central database. The PCRF mainly there to do the job which is to perform charging and network control that is flow based regarding the data flow service and the detection of the data flow to guarantee the QoS (Quality of Service). There are various different type of multimedia network and one of the major network is the VoLTE that is known as the voice over long term evolution, SMS (Short Messaging Service). Control plane, user plane and application plane is used to compose the IMS. The CSCF (Call Session Control Function) and the HSS is included in the control plane [6]. The user plane is basically the application of the initiation session protocol that is included on the devices. The CSCF is divided in to Proxy-Call Session Control Functions (P-CSCF), Serving-Call Session Control Functions (S-CSCF) and Interrogating-Call Session Control Functions (I-CSCF). In the Domain Name Service (DNS) the IP adresses is presented on each of the network domains [7].
The application plane consists of the application servers those can be able to provide various service like the SMS, VoLTE, etc. IMS data signalling transmission is based on the SIP and data packets are basically transmitted on the basis of real-time transport protocol (RTP). The SIP layer has a huge importance in the IMS, which controls the various different services of multimedia. It has many risks and threats because the properties are of text based [8]. The IS systems can be suffered from the attacks that are related to SIP.
Network Speed and Bandwidth Allocation
There are many kind of attacks happen in the network of the LTE/LTE-A. The attacks are mainly happens on the access network, core network, IMS network and on the User equipment. There are many different kind of attacks made in the access network with the core network. . The access network attacks are of many types like the disclosure of IMSI, Location Tracking, RF spoofing, sniffing, and jamming, DOS/DDOS attacks, rouge based attacks and more [9]. The DoS/DDoS attacks are divided onto two parts one is the DoS attack by launching the Botnet another is the DoS signalling attack. There are eavesdropping attack and replay attacks as well in the access network. The core attacks consists of the insider attacks and the DoS/DDoS attacks. In the core attacks DoS/DDoS is divided into two part one is the overload of HSS and another is the overload of SGW [10].
There are many different kind of attacks made on the access network with the core network.
In this part the discussion will be made on the attacks that is dine on the Access Network of the LTE/LTE-A. There are many different kind of attack procedure that is implemented. One of the main problem that is happen in the access network is of the International Mobile Subscriber Identity disclosure. IMSI is the subscriber identity that remains constant. And the IMSI number must be kept confidential due to some security reason. If the IMSI is disclosed then subscriber details might get leaked which contains the information of the subscriber, location information and the information of the conversation that is made using the network. The IMSI details can be misused in the protocol of the SMS [11]. The attacker can target the victims IMSI by the use of MSISDN (Mobile Station International Subscriber Directory Number). Another attack is done by the use of the location tracking. The location of the user is one of the main aspect that is needed to be kept confidential by the provider of the network. Mobile application is made in a way that the physical address of the mobile user can be identified by the mobile network. The main threat on the user location identity is the technologies of the recent positioning and the services that are of location based. Many research stated that the location disclosure attacks mainly done by the IDR (Insert-Subscriber-Data-Request) and by the UDR (User Data Request) [12]. By these attacks the attackers will be impersonate the HSS of the partner and then send the IDR which is used for HSS to request the information of the location of the EPS of a UE to the MME, and then the MME returns the location information of the EPS which consists of the Cell Global Identity. Another atcaks that are done on the acess networks are the Radio frequency jamming, sniffing, spoofing, DDOS/DOS attacks, De-synchronization attacks and the rouge base station attacks.
Architecture of LTE/LTE-A
There are many different kind of attacks happen in the core networks as well. The first attack that made is the DOS/DDOS Attacks. For the normal data transmission the core network serves a huge role and the attacks in DOS/DDOS aims at the element of the core network and possessed serious threat to the LTE/LTE-A networks [13]. The botnet is used in the network to attack on the core networks by launching the DDOS attacks on the core network it also use to generate the attack floods on the core network. Another kind of attack that is made on the core network is of the insider attack. These attacks are mostly neglected or these are assumed as unlikely. This attacks mainly done by the user those have the privilege to use the core network. The insider has the ability to shut down the base station [14].
To mitigate the risks of the network several countermeasure is needed to take:
It is required to keep the IMSI confidential so that the IMSI will not be disclosed and it will not be used for further attacks.
To prevent the location tracking the user must enable the security feature in the device so that only the physical location will only tracked and the other details will not be leaked which will prevent the vulnerabilities.
The user network user must take required steps to prevent from jamming, sniffing, and spoofing attack so that the data will not be breached by the network and the user information remain safe.
To defend against the DoS/DDoS attacks two method needed to be taken care of one method is the filtering another method is the blackholing. These two techniques will be able to mitigate the risks of the DoS/DDoS attacks in the access network as well as the core network.
The insider attack in the core network can be prevented by limiting the authorization to the people that has the network authorization.
Conclusion:
From the above report it can be concluded that the LTE/LTE-A is one of the latest generation of the mobile networks. The speed and the bandwidth allocation of the LTE network is very high than the other existing network. In the above report the attacks on the core and on access network is discussed and analysed that what kind of attack is made on the networks and what is the impact of this attacks.
References:
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