Rogue Femtocell Owners: How Mallory Can Monitor My Devices
Venue
2013 Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE, New Jersey, USA, pp. 3553-3558
Publication Year
2013
Authors
David Malone, Darren F Kavanagh, Niall Richard Murphy
BibTeX
Abstract
Femtocells are small cellular telecommunication base stations that provide improved
cellular coverage. These devices provide important improvements in coverage,
battery life and throughput, they also present security challenges. We identify a
problem which has not been identified in previous studies of femtocell security:
rogue owners of femtocells can secretly monitor third-party mobile devices by using
the femtocell's access control features. We present traffic analysis of real
femtocell traces are presented and demonstrate the ability to monitor mobile
devices through classification of the femtocell's encrypted backhaul traffic. We
also consider the femtocell's power usage and status LEDs as other side channels
that provide information on the femtocell's operation. We conclude by presenting
suitable solutions to overcome this problem.
