Attack of the week: Voice calls in LTE

I haven’t written an “attack of the week” post in a while, and it’s been bumming me out. This is not because there’s been a lack of attacks, but mostly because there hasn’t been an attack on something sufficiently widely-used that it can rouse me out of my blogging torpor. But today brings a beautiful attack called ReVoLTE, on a set of protocols that I particularly love to see get broken: namely, cellular protocols.

And specifically, the (voice over) LTE standards. I’m excited about these particular protocols — and this new attack — because it’s so rare to see actual cellular protocols and implementations get broken. This is mostly because these standards are developed in smoke-filled rooms and written up in 12,000 page documents that researchers never have the energy to deal with.

Moreover, implementing the attacks requires researchers to mess with gnarly radio protocols.

Source: cryptographyengineering.com