back to article 'Long-standing vulns' in 5G protocols open the door for attacks on smartphone users

Some 5G networks are at risk of attack thanks to "long-standing vulnerabilities" in core protocols, according to infosec researchers at Positive Technologies. "The stack of technologies in 5G potentially leaves the door open to attacks on subscribers and the operator's network. Such attacks can be performed from the …

  1. Tom Paine
    Meh

    Astonishing

    So the absolute latest and greatest mobile phone network technology, the one that (along with IPv6) was going to allow absolutely ubiquitous embedded systems in anything that moves (and a lot of things that don't move, or don't move after they've been bolted / screwed / nailed / welded into place),.. that technology... has well-known, long-standing weaknesses in the protocols and architecture? You could knock me down with a feather. It's almost as if the designers, architects and research engineers were subconsciously making sure there'd be a need for designers, architects and engineers to develop 6G at some point. Or something.

    1. Mike 137 Silver badge

      Re: Astonishing

      "It's almost as if the designers, architects and research engineers were subconsciously making sure there'd be a need for designers, architects and engineers"

      Actually, from long observation, I think it's just another case of Dunning Kruger - they haven't a clue that they haven't a clue. The entirety of IT is not yet an engineering discipline. It seems that software development in particular is mostly conducted without any discipline at all.

      1. fidodogbreath

        Re: Astonishing

        It seems that software development in particular is mostly conducted without any discipline at all.

        Indeed. Hanlon's Razor also comes to mind: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

        Admittedly, "never" is a bit strong, because malice should never be completely off the table; but in a world where "I messed with it for a few minutes on jsfiddle" is considered to be both development and testing, stupidity should never be off the table either.

        [edit: typo]

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Boffin

        @Mike 137 Re: Astonishing

        If you look at IT today... Software Engineer is now a job title and not a sign that you actually went to an engineering school and learned any sort of engineering discipline.

        Its now hiring the lowest cost provider which means shipping the job overseas to untrained or semi-trained code monkeys who don't know what they are doing.

        Add in a manager who wants to meet a deadline at any cost including not doing the job correctly.

        There's a bit more... but in telephony most of these issues can be sorted out with a bit more thought.

        1. Mike 16

          Re: @Mike 137 Astonishing

          @Mike the FlyingRat Looks like I've been shunted into the "Mike channel". Anyway:

          ---

          in telephony most of these issues can be sorted out with a bit more thought.

          ---

          Maybe. One of my previous employers (highly capitalized large scale networking startup) had a mix of "BitHeads" and "BellHeads". Despite having been out of Telcom for over 20 years at that point, I ended up being considered an honorary BellHead in a majority BitHead place. Of course, we later cratered and were bought for ten cents on the dollar by a large competitor, due to some major issues which IMHO had a lot to do with a modern software attitude.

          Previous job was working on embedded systems that were bought as capital equipment, so we knew we were on the hook for any failures, not able to wash their hand of any responsibility for software issues. That may have contributed to my acceptance.

          Anyway, I see no reason to believe that a modern Telcom company is anything like the "20 year minimum service life and repairs are on our dime" Telcom companies of the old days. Especially in software.

          1. ShortLegs

            Re: @Mike 137 Astonishing

            @Mike 16

            Global Crossing? If not, very similar :)

      3. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Astonishing

        > It seems that software development in particular is mostly conducted without any discipline at all.

        These issues are not really anything to do with software development, and everything to do with protocol specification and interaction - ie. the design work done before there is something for a software engineer to implement.

        From work on protocol specification, conformance test and interop, I suspect people were focused on getting each specific protocol to robustly perform the core function it was intended to address rather than make it bulletproof, So really much of the Internet and 5G protocol stacks are really at the v1 stage where they deliver core functionality but not much else, we really v2 where wider issues such as interaction (with other protocols) and mischievous use are considered. It looks like we need to revisit the whole RFC and 3GPP approval process to try and ensure that it includes eelements that try and bring these wider considerations into the approval process..

        In this contect, it looks like we need a way to incorporate IPv6.1, .2,.3 into the interop. mix. ie. ARPANET was intended to be used with clear cut versions - hence v4, v5 and v6. Interestingly the reasons for not calling v6 v5 because v5 was experimental show there is a need for some finer version information in the packet header/connection negotiation.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Astonishing

        “without any discipline at all”

        Oh I don’t know, there is always the discipline present breathing down their necks in the form of manglement

        At some point, you have to take a step back and look at the shit that one has already created before moving onto creating new shit, did the old shit get perfected, if not, you have to question whether or not one is even an engineer or just some hipster looking for the next buzz.

      5. Snorlax Silver badge

        Re: Astonishing

        ” It seems that software development in particular is mostly conducted without any discipline at all.”

        @Mike 137: Indeed.

        One word: “Agile”. Ship crappy code early, and rewrite it regularly.

    2. DS999 Silver badge

      Re: Astonishing

      A lot of the security issues have to do with the need to coexist with older cellular standards. You knock out a decent chunk of the vulnerabilities once you dump your 2G and 3G and go LTE and 5G only, as will soon be the situation across the US. Verizon and T-Mobile will shut down 3G by the end of January, AT&T will follow a year later. Since smaller regional carriers rely on them for roaming they'll be forced to follow suit, and obviously the MVNOs reselling their airtime must also.

      It also lets you get rid of a lot of complexity not having to support all the old voice protocols if you are VoLTE only and don't do circuit switched voice calling. That works on the client end too - I strongly suspect that when Apple introduces its own cellular modem for the iPhone in a couple years or so it will be LTE/5G only. While I'm sure 3G will be supported in the UK/EU longer than in the US, that's mostly due to stuff like alarms not because they will have any significant area still unserved by LTE, so why bother to implement a dying standard?

      Not that LTE or 5G could ever be called secure, mind you, but they're way more secure than GSM!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Astonishing

        Sure, HTTP/2.0 is evidently a 2G legacy protocol.

        BTW: Swisscom is shutting off its 2G network while in Italy Vodafone will shut down next year its 3G one.

        1. DS999 Silver badge

          Re: Astonishing

          HTTP is not something required for 5G to function, but a protocol run on top of it. That's like saying IPv4 is insecure because you can run HTTP/2.0 using it.

  2. Version 1.0 Silver badge
    Joke

    Hacked or Snacked?

    I haven't seen a phone system that couldn't be hacked since I was a kid using two soup cans and some wet string.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hacked or Snacked?

      In my youth most of my technically inclined friends actually hacked the family phone lines.

      Did I, ahh now that would be telling.

      1. TheSkunkyMonk

        Re: Hacked or Snacked?

        It was through necessity in my case, I was 11-12ish and needed my warez after the first 1k+ phone bill in the early nineties I had to resort to chopping into the phone line, luckily ran right outside my bedroom window :D Got another month before daddy found out, poor bloke didn't know what todo with me, great man.

  3. NonSSL-Login

    Of course it is

    Ignoring things like the SS7 protocol and other backwards compatibility issues, and badly configured firewalls that try and patch some of them, its obvious the NSA and GCHQ will continue to have a hand in making sure future protocols and hardware are insecure as they have come to rely on abusing the system for so long.

    Look at us all shouty on this hand about Chinese 5G equipment while on the other hand quietly subverting security in protocols, software and standards to maintain the status quo.

    Backwards compatibility needs to be scrapped and a more secure gateway is needed to keep old equipment/3rd world countries still connected rather than the everything connected + trust system currently in play.

  4. thames

    HTTP/2 ?

    The most interesting bit is the focus on how 5G is supposedly vulnerable, when at least part of the problem seems to be 5G's dependence on HTTP/2, which is used for all sorts of things which matter a lot more than cell phones.

    Wasn't HTTP/2 supposed to have been designed by the cream of the US tech industry? What's going on here, and why aren't the alarm bells being rung about HTTP/2 itself instead of 5G?

    Either something has been left out of the story or there is a much bigger problem lurking in the background which has the potential to affect many sectors of the tech industry.

    1. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

      Re: HTTP/2 ?

      HTTP/2 was primarily designed to serve ads and web-bugs more quickly. Being good for other things was just a sales pitch to improve client support. The vulnerabilities in HTTP/2 similar to the ones in HTTP/1, but with more of them. Essentially, you can make completely valid requests that are extremely expensive for the server to support.

      Anyone who worked on web servers in the past knows that dialup users were essentially a DDoS attack. Each server is handling barely 100 operations per second but they're so slow that thousands of requests are running concurrently. If any service was performing a fully buffered request/response, you'd know about it at 1 AM when it OOM crashes.

  5. Snorlax Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    But I thought...

    ...everything was going to be fine security-wise once the networks got rid of their Huawei equipment. Mike Pompeo said so repeatedly.

    Yours,

    Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells

  6. TeeCee Gold badge
    Meh

    ...after the transition [from 4G LTE networks] is over...

    I wouldn't hold your breath, there's still plenty of places where 4G is non-existent.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Recipe for disaster

    So lets see here, we have a mentally immature monkey species with access to and ‘some’ understanding of high-technologies, the level of which will only add yet more jeopardy as time passes.

    What could possibly go wrong?

  8. six_tymes

    I read an article on another site, it was last year, it said that mobile security wont become truly secure until 6G. apparently 5G just does not have the proper protocols in place. another site said Samsung has already started r&d on 6G in late 2018. 2026 is the current target year for 6G roll out.

    1. sgp

      Ah yes, and then we will have truly futurist things such as remote surgery.

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