An Analysis of DoS Attack Strategies Against the LTE RAN

Authors

  • Jill Jermyn Department of Computer Science, Columbia University New York, NY
  • Gabriel Salles-Loustau Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Miami, Miami, FL
  • Saman Zonouz Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Miami, Miami, FL

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13052/jcsm2245-1439.323

Keywords:

LTE, DoS, security, mobile malware, botnets

Abstract

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the latest 3GPP mobile network standard, offering an all-IP network with higher efficiency and up to ten times the data rates of its predecessors. Due to an increase in cyber crime and the proliferation of mobile computing, attacks stemming from mobile devices are becoming more frequent and complex. Mobile malware can create smart-phone botnets in which a large number of mobile devices conspire to perform malicious activities on the cellular network. It has been shown that such botnets can cause a denial of service (DoS) by exhausting user traffic capacity over the air interface. Through simulation and with studies in a real-world deployment, this paper examines the impact of a botnet of devices seeking to attack the LTE network using different types of strategies. We quantify the adverse effects on legitimate users as the size of the botnet scales up in both sparsely and densely-populated cells for varying traffic Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Our results show that a single attacker can drastically reduce the QoS of legitimate devices in the same cell. Furthermore, we prove that the impact of the attack can be optimized by tuning the attack strategy, leveraging the LTE uplink MAC scheduler.

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Author Biographies

Jill Jermyn, Department of Computer Science, Columbia University New York, NY

Jill Jermyn is a PhD student at Columbia University, where she works under Professor Salvatore Stolfo in the Intrusion Detection Systems Lab. Some of her research interests are wireless and cellular network security, mobile, and cloud computing. Part of her previous experience includes internships at AT&T Security Research Center and IBM Watson Research Center. Starting Fall 2014 she will be Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Purchase College. Jill has been granted numerous awards for her work, including several from Google, Facebook, Applied Computer Security Associates (ACSA), Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the National Physical Science Consortium. Prior to her career in computing, Jill pursued a career as a concert violinist. She has performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, the Austrian Cultural Forum NY, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, to name a few.

Gabriel Salles-Loustau, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Miami, Miami, FL

Gabriel Salles-Loustau is a PhD candidate in the 4N6 Cyber Security and Forensics Laboratory in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Miami. His research interests include systems and network security, mobile devices systems security and data privacy.

Saman Zonouz, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Miami, Miami, FL

Saman Zonouz is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Miami (UM) since August 2011, and the Director of the 4N6 Cyber Security and Forensics Laboratory. He has been awarded the Faculty Fellowship Award by AFOSR in 2013, the Best Student Paper Award at IEEE SmartGridComm 2013, the EARLY CAREER Research award from the University of Miami in 2012 as well as the UM Provost Research award in 2011. The 4N6 research group consists of 1 post-doctoral associate and 8 Ph.D. students, and their research has been funded by grants from NSF, ONR, DOE/ARPA-E, and Fortinet Corporation. Saman’s current research focuses on systems and smartphone security and privacy, trustworthy cyber-physical critical infrastructures, binary and malware analysis, as well as adaptive intrusion tolerance architectures. Saman has served as the chair, program committee member, and a reviewer for international conferences and journals. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science, specifically, intrusion tolerance architectures, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011.

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Published

2014-07-10

How to Cite

1.
Jermyn J, Salles-Loustau G, Zonouz S. An Analysis of DoS Attack Strategies Against the LTE RAN. JCSANDM [Internet]. 2014 Jul. 10 [cited 2024 Nov. 4];3(2):159-80. Available from: https://journals.riverpublishers.com/index.php/JCSANDM/article/view/6181

Issue

2014: Vol 3 Iss 2

Section

Articles