Researchers Uncover Security Vulnerabilities in Femtocell Technology

By Brian Prince
eWEEK.com
2010-02-01

Two Trustwave security consultants report they have uncovered hardware and software vulnerabilities in femtocell devices that can be used to take over the device. The duo will present their findings at the ShmooCon conference in Washington.

Researchers with Trustwave have discovered flaws in the hardware and software of femtocell devices that can allow an attacker to take full control of the miniature cell towers without the user's knowledge.

Zack Fasel and Matthew Jakubowski, security consultants with Trustwave's SpiderLabs, will present their findings at ShmooCon, held Feb. 5 to 7 in Washington.

"Our original [area of] curiosity was whether these devices could be utilized to supplement cellular deployment in third-world countries (such as the OpenBTS+Asterisk project) in a much cheaper package ($250 compared to over $1,200 for a USRP hardware device plus server costs),"
Fasel explained. "After hours of sniffing traffic, changing IP address ranges, guessing passwords and investigating hardware pinouts, we had obtained root access on these Linux-based cellular-based devices, which piqued our curiosity [about] the security implications."

Femtocell devices are small cellular base stations used to increase wireless coverage in areas with limited service. Because a cell phone does not have business logic to prevent it from connecting to a wireless device acting as a tower that has been tampered with, it is possible for malicious users to abuse that trust and sniff traffic as it traverses the network.

"Through the theoretical attack method outlined in our talk, the attacker would compromise the femtocell device to gain full root access over the device," Fasel said. "As the attacker has access to the device, any services the device offers [are] subject to the attacker's control, including voice, data, authentication and access to the femtocell's home network."