Fake BTS Attacks
Fake Base Transceiver Station (BTS) attacks involve deploying rogue cell towers that impersonate legitimate network infrastructure to intercept communications and perform man-in-the-middle attacks.
Technical Overview
A fake BTS operates by broadcasting with higher signal strength than legitimate towers, causing devices to connect to it. Once connected, the attacker can intercept all communications, inject malicious traffic, or relay traffic to the legitimate network while monitoring.
- •Complete interception of voice and data
- •Man-in-the-middle attacks on all communications
- •Injection of malicious SMS or data
- •Denial of service to targeted devices
- •Credential harvesting from unencrypted protocols
- •Deploy rogue BTS with higher signal strength
- •Force device connection through jamming legitimate towers
- •Intercept authentication credentials
- •Perform active man-in-the-middle attacks
- •Inject malicious content into communications
- 1Set up fake BTS using OpenBTS or commercial equipment
- 2Configure to mimic legitimate network parameters
- 3Broadcast with higher power than legitimate towers
- 4Capture device connections and authentication
- 5Relay traffic to legitimate network or terminate locally
- 6Monitor and manipulate communications as needed
- Use IMSI catcher detection applications
- Monitor for unexpected network changes
- Enable network authentication verification
- Use VPN for all data communications
- Implement certificate pinning in applications
- Deploy network-level anomaly detection
- →Government surveillance operations
- →Corporate espionage at business events
- →Criminal interception for fraud
- →Targeted attacks on high-value individuals
- →Border control and immigration enforcement
Related Attacks
IMSI catchers are rogue base stations that trick mobile devices into connecting to them, allowing attackers to capture International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) numbers and intercept communications.
A5/1 is the encryption algorithm used in 2G GSM networks. Due to its weak 64-bit key and known vulnerabilities, it can be broken in real-time to decrypt voice calls and SMS messages.
SMS interception attacks allow attackers to capture, read, and potentially modify text messages sent between mobile devices, compromising the confidentiality and integrity of SMS communications.