If you’ve been dreaming about 4G and 5G recently, you might want to think again.
It seems that security researchers are already highlighting some flaws in the 5G a few months since it’s among us.
Flaws which allow snooping
Engadget reports that experts have discovered three flaws in both 4G and 5G which could be used in order to intercept phone calls and track your location.
“The first and most important, Torpedo, relies on a flaw in the paging protocol that notifies phones of incoming calls and texts,” the publication writes.
If you start canceling several calls in a short amount of time, you can send a paging message without alerting the device to a call. This will allow you to track the phone’s location and more than that. It will also open the door to two more attacks.
Engadget writes that “One of these, Piercer, lets you determine the unique IMSI number attached to a user. on a 4G network, An IMSI-Cracking attack can guess the IMSI number through brute force on both 4G and 5G.”
This will make it possible to snoop on calls and location-related data via devices such as Stingrays even if you own a brand new 5G handset.
It seems that unfortunately, Torpedo is also able to insert/block messages such as Amber alerts.
There are not permanent flaws, but fixes will take time
These vulnerabilities can affect most 4G and 5G networks in the world.
The online magazine says “All four of the largest US carriers (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Engadget parent Verizon) are susceptible to Torpedo, while one unnamed network could also fall prey to Piercer.”
They also write that these flaws are not permanent, but the fixes will definitely require a lot of time.
You can head over to the original article in order to find more details on these flaws plaguing 4G and 5G.
After finishing Theatrical Journalism at the Faculty of Theatre and Television in Cluj-Napoca, Rada reviewed movies, books, theatre pieces and she also wrote articles from the IT niche as a content editor for software producers. At the moment, she is working with various online advertising firms.
