TY - GEN
T1 - A man-in-the-middle attack on UMTS
AU - Meyer, Ulrike
AU - Wetzel, Susanne
PY - 2004
Y1 - 2004
N2 - In this paper we present a man-in-the-middle attack on the Universal Mobile Telecommunication Standard (UMTS), one of the newly emerging 3G mobile technologies. The attack allows an intruder to impersonate a valid GSM base station to a UMTS subscriber regardless of the fact that UMTS authentication and key agreement are used. As a result, an intruder can eavesdrop on all mobile-station-initiated traffic. Since the UMTS standard requires mutual authentication between the mobile station and the network, so far UMTS networks were considered to be secure against man-in-the-middle attacks. The network authentication defined in the UMTS standard depends on both the validity of the authentication token and the integrity protection of the subsequent security mode command. We show that both of these mechanisms are necessary in order to prevent a man-in-the-middle attack. As a consequence we show that an attacker can mount an impersonation attack since GSM base stations do not support integrity protection. Possible victims to our attack are all mobile stations that support the UTRAN and the GSM air interface simultaneously. In particular, this is the case for most of the equipment used during the transition phase from 2G (GSM) to 3G (UMTS) technology.
AB - In this paper we present a man-in-the-middle attack on the Universal Mobile Telecommunication Standard (UMTS), one of the newly emerging 3G mobile technologies. The attack allows an intruder to impersonate a valid GSM base station to a UMTS subscriber regardless of the fact that UMTS authentication and key agreement are used. As a result, an intruder can eavesdrop on all mobile-station-initiated traffic. Since the UMTS standard requires mutual authentication between the mobile station and the network, so far UMTS networks were considered to be secure against man-in-the-middle attacks. The network authentication defined in the UMTS standard depends on both the validity of the authentication token and the integrity protection of the subsequent security mode command. We show that both of these mechanisms are necessary in order to prevent a man-in-the-middle attack. As a consequence we show that an attacker can mount an impersonation attack since GSM base stations do not support integrity protection. Possible victims to our attack are all mobile stations that support the UTRAN and the GSM air interface simultaneously. In particular, this is the case for most of the equipment used during the transition phase from 2G (GSM) to 3G (UMTS) technology.
KW - Authentication
KW - GSM
KW - Man-in-the-middle attack
KW - Mobile communication
KW - UMTS
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=11244304396&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=11244304396&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/1023646.1023662
DO - 10.1145/1023646.1023662
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:11244304396
SN - 158113925X
SN - 9781581139259
T3 - Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Workshop on Wireless Security, WiSe
SP - 90
EP - 97
BT - Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Workshop on Wireless Security, WiSe
T2 - Proceedings of the 2004 ACM Workshop on Wireless Security, WiSe
Y2 - 1 October 2004 through 1 October 2004
ER -