But Professor Jeff Reed, of the wireless research group at Virginia Tech, has concerns about how secure the LTE network is from hackers. “Picture a jammer that fits in a small briefcase that takes out miles of LTE signals—whether commercial or public safety… This can be relatively easy to do.”
One of the core vulnerabilities for LTE networks is that they devote their control instructions, the way networks assemble bits to make media appear on your phone, to around 1 percent of the signal. Prof. Reed’s research assistant Marc Lichtman characterized the vulnerability this way, “Your phone is constantly syncing with the base station… If you can disrupt that synchronization, you will not be able to send or receive data.”
That means you’ve rendered the network useless.
The most frightening aspect of the group’s findings is that the technology needed to render a network useless is inexpensive and commonplace. With a laptop, a $650 RF processing unit and a moderately rated power supply any individual could shut down communications within a fairly large area.
On Thursday Prof. Reed’s group filed their finding with the National Telecommunications and InformationAdministration (NTIA), which reports to the U.S. President on telecommunication and information policy. As of this writing the NTIA has had no response to the findings.
So the question is, how do we design a more secure data network?
Article Source: MIT Technology Review