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Did 5G kill the IMSI catcher?

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Re: Did 5G kill the IMSI catcher?

#51

Post by esseph »

donnachangstein wrote: post #45
buckle8017 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verizon has actually deployed mmWave 5G fairly widely.

Sprint deployed WiMAX (remember that?) fairly widely, lot of good that did them. mmWave is as dead as dead. The cellular Betamax. iPhone 16e (the everyman's iPhone) doesn't support it, and neither did the SE before it. VZW will be converting those base stations into birdhouses in 5-7 years.

That's sad for Apple, then. A poor decision on their part.

Examples of Android phones that often support mmWave 5G:

Samsung: Many Galaxy S and Z series models, including recent releases.

Google: Pixel phones, especially the Pro models.

OnePlus: Various 5G phones, including the 10 Pro, 10T, and Nord series.

(etc)

Apple should get their shit together.

Re: Did 5G kill the IMSI catcher?

#52

Post by cyberax »

donnachangstein wrote: post #45
buckle8017 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verizon has actually deployed mmWave 5G fairly widely.

Sprint deployed WiMAX (remember that?) fairly widely, lot of good that did them. mmWave is as dead as dead. The cellular Betamax. iPhone 16e (the everyman's iPhone) doesn't support it, and neither did the SE before it. VZW will be converting those base stations into birdhouses in 5-7 years.

mmWave is going to be useful in places like stadiums or large arenas, though. It works wonders in these kinds of applications.

WiMAX never really worked well at all.

Re: Did 5G kill the IMSI catcher?

#53

Post by steadychilis »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #38

This is sort of meta to the article... Wow a web site generated using AI[1]. (or perhaps a human using AI) Anecdotally, when I was attending college there was a 12 year old girl also attending and in some of my classes, particularly my freshman physics class. She was knocking the curve off with high scores on all of the exams. I got a chance to talk to her at lunch one day and it turned out she had an eidetic memory.…

1) Yes, it's still possible to convince a phone to connect to older RAT generations. However, the idea is that as those are phased out, it's unlikely that they'll be enabled on UEs, so phones likely won't connect and "say hi" as you say. For example, 2G is already being disabled on many devices. It'll be a while before 2G-4G is fully phased out and IMSI Catchers become completely infeasible, but I think that it's safe to say that "5G got it right" in finally solving this issue.

2) I don't think you have a good understanding of how SUCIs work if you think that it's unique to a device. The UE generates a fresh ECC ephemeral public key every time it sends its SUCI (which isn't often to begin with due to GUTIs, which are one-time use and only assigned post-ciphering). You can read more about it here: https://medium.com/@aditya.koranga/ecies-in-5g-core-supi-to-...

Re: Did 5G kill the IMSI catcher?

#54

Post by huslage »

lxgr wrote: post #31
huslage wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5G Standalone networks don’t have 4G to fall back to. 5G Non-standalone networks are essentially 4G networks with a 5G RAN, so SUCI remains optional and most core vendors don’t support it.

That's not what 5G standalone means, as far as I understand. The network I'm using supports 5G SA in some cells, but my phone definitely still falls back to both 4G and 5G non-SA in some areas where it's not yet available. And even if 5G SA were available everywhere, there's the concern of roaming.

Correct, your phone needs to actually re-connect between the two networks. It's a whole new session and you can't handover between 5G SA and 5G NSA/LTE networks. There are some configurations that make this not much of an issue, but technically they are totally different networks.

Re: Did 5G kill the IMSI catcher?

#55

Post by huslage »

amelius wrote: post #21

I know very little about the protocol aspects of cellular communication, so can anyone explain how such a huge gaping security hole could come into existence?

The networks are insecure by standard. They are designed such that they can have "lawful intercept" by government entities. The key material on the SIM card is readily transferred between the carrier and SIM/eSIM card manufacturers, which enables multiple levels of supply chain attacks if the material is mishandled.

IMSI-catchers are not considered a security hole by the carriers or the standards bodies. SUCI/SUPI was put in at the request of phone vendors, if I remember correctly, and is still the only piece of public key cryptography in the networks. Everything else is symmetric keys.

Re: Did 5G kill the IMSI catcher?

#56

Post by adrr »

esseph wrote: post #51
donnachangstein wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sprint deployed WiMAX (remember that?) fairly widely, lot of good that did them. mmWave is as dead as dead. The cellular Betamax. iPhone 16e (the everyman's iPhone) doesn't support it, and neither did the SE before it. VZW will be converting those base stations into birdhouses in 5-7 years.

That's sad for Apple, then. A poor decision on their part. Examples of Android phones that often support mmWave 5G: Samsung: Many Galaxy S and Z series models, including recent releases. Google: Pixel phones, especially the Pro models. OnePlus: Various 5G phones, including the 10 Pro, 10T, and Nord series. (etc) Apple should get their shit together.

It never worked unless you were walking on the street. Expensive too, I heard $20 per antenna. Millimeter is good for fixed antenna and delivering internet last mile to homes. Verizon bought into it millimeter while TMobile focused on mid bands, why T-Mobile is faster on average than Verizon. People use their phones indoors.

Re: Did 5G kill the IMSI catcher?

#57

Post by sidewndr46 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #9
lxgr wrote: post #3

I've always been wondering: Is there a SIM card configuration flag that allows telling the phone to never even attempt an attach using a given technology? This would allow leaking identifiers (at the cost of greatly reducing roaming coverage, at the moment), attaching to spoofed networks (for 2G, which does not have mutual authentication) etc.

SIM cards don't connect to networks, the phone modem can just disable support for such protocols. That'd probably be illegal, though, in case you're trying to call emergency services and don't have 5G reception. Some Android phones have a setting to at least disable 2G and you can easily configure them to a "preference" of only 5G. I believe iPhones have a 2G toggle as well if you enable lockdown mode. It'll be years…

The wording your usage here seems to suggest that the phones can be configured to not connect to 2G networks. This is false if you live in the USA. The phone will not connect to 2G networks regardless of any setting. There have not been any to connect to for a while now. The only thing out there that is 2G any longer is malicious actors.

It should come as no small surprise that phones in the US markets ship with a feature that is a de-facto backdoor.

Re: Did 5G kill the IMSI catcher?

#58

Post by lxgr »

huslage wrote: post #54
lxgr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what 5G standalone means, as far as I understand. The network I'm using supports 5G SA in some cells, but my phone definitely still falls back to both 4G and 5G non-SA in some areas where it's not yet available. And even if 5G SA were available everywhere, there's the concern of roaming.

Correct, your phone needs to actually re-connect between the two networks. It's a whole new session and you can't handover between 5G SA and 5G NSA/LTE networks. There are some configurations that make this not much of an issue, but technically they are totally different networks.

You can definitely hand over sessions between 5G and 4G (and by extension 5G NSA, which essentially is 4G from a signaling point of view).

Re: Did 5G kill the IMSI catcher?

#59

Post by tejtm »

jorvi wrote: post #26
jeroenhd wrote: post #6

Criminal IMSI catchers are pretty much dead, but with the aid of carriers law enforcement can still use similar technology even with full standalone 5G networks. I don't know how often unauthorized IMSI catchers are used in the wild, but I doubt it's a relevant percentage of the total amount of IMSI catchers out there. Thanks to mmWave and beam forming, 5G allows operators to practically track you down to the exact c…

5G beamforming is not that accurate a proxy signal, and mmWave is phone vaporware, instead only significantly used for point-to-point connections. Line-of-sight requirements make it dead in the water for anything else.

[flagged]

Re: Did 5G kill the IMSI catcher?

#60

Post by Spooky23 »

buckle8017 wrote: post #40
jorvi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5G beamforming is not that accurate a proxy signal, and mmWave is phone vaporware, instead only significantly used for point-to-point connections. Line-of-sight requirements make it dead in the water for anything else.

Verizon has actually deployed mmWave 5G fairly widely.

They did - it was an atypically awful engineering decision that caused them to bungle their 5G rollout and cede market share to TMobile.

It only makes sense as a cable tv displacement that’s easier to deploy (and cuts out their unions) in cities. But to my knowledge, they haven’t done that. They dtoppef hundreds of poles in my city that aren’t even active.

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