Paper Info
Title
On cellular botnets: measuring the impact of malicious devices on a cellular network core
Abstract
The vast expansion of interconnectivity with the Internet and the rapid evolution of highly-capable but largely insecure mobile devices threatens cellular networks. In this paper, we characterize the impact of the large scale compromise and coordination of mobile phones in attacks against the core of these networks. Through a combination of measurement, simulation and analysis, we demonstrate the ability of a botnet composed of as few as 11,750 compromised mobile phones to degrade service to area-code sized regions by 93%. As such attacks are accomplished through the execution of network service requests and not a constant stream of phone calls, users are unlikely to be aware of their occurrence. We then investigate a number of significant network bottlenecks, their impact on the density of compromised nodes per base station and how they can be avoided. We conclude by discussing a number of countermeasures that may help to partially mitigate the threats posed by such attacks.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1145/1653662.1653690
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
Keywords
Field
DocType
significant network bottleneck,malicious device,phone call,network service request,cellular network,large scale compromise,cellular network core,cellular botnets,mobile phone,base station,rapid evolution,constant stream,insecure mobile device,telecommunications,denial of service
Network service,Base station,Mobile search,Denial-of-service attack,Botnet,Computer security,Computer science,Public land mobile network,Computer network,Cellular network,Radio access network
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
115
10.47
31
Authors
7
Search Limit
100115
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Patrick Traynor1117187.80
Michael Lin211510.47
Machigar Ongtang381787.55
Vikhyath Rao413612.83
T Jaeger52635255.67
P. McDaniel67174494.57
Thomas La Porta780191.33