Abstract

Cellular devices support various technical features and services for 2G, 3G, 4G and upcoming 5G networks. For example, these technical features contain physical layer throughput categories, radio protocol information, security algorithm, carrier aggregation bands and type of services such as GSM -R, Voice over LTE etc. These technical features and network services termed as ‘device capabilities’ and exchanged with the network during the device registration and Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocols. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) responsible for the worldwide standardization of cellular communication networks has designed and mandated the use of the AKA protocol to protect the subscribers’ mobile services.

In this talk, we discuss several vulnerabilities discovered in cellular device authentication and registration process in 5G networks. Low-cost hardware setup, proof-of-concepts attacks to demonstrate the impact, countermeasures, and remedial actions from 3GPP/GSMA for 5G networks will also be presented.