USENIX Enigma 2021 - Detecting Fake 4G LTE Base Stations in Real Time

Detecting Fake 4G LTE Base Stations in Real Time

Cooper Quintin, Electronic Frontier Foundation

4G based IMSI catchers such as the Hailstorm are becoming more popular with governments and law enforcement around the world, as well as spies, and even criminals. Until now IMSI catcher detection has focused on 2G IMSI catchers such as the Stingray which are quickly falling out of favor. In this talk, we will demonstrate a brand new software project to detect fake 4G base stations, with open source software and relatively cheap hardware. We will reveal what we have found so far using our methods. And finally, we will present a plan to dramatically limit the capabilities of IMSI catchers (with the long term goal of making them useless once and for all).

View the full Enigma 2021 program at https://www.usenix.org/conference/eni...