GTP DoS Attacks

GTP DoS Attacks

Advanced Denial of Service techniques targeting GTP protocol infrastructure

Attack Overview

Attack Complexity
Medium

Requires network access and basic protocol knowledge

Impact Level
High

Service disruption and network unavailability

Affected Systems
Core Network

SGSN, GGSN, SGW, PGW, and connected users

What are GTP DoS Attacks?

GTP Denial of Service (DoS) attacks target the availability of mobile core network services by overwhelming GTP endpoints with malicious traffic, exploiting protocol weaknesses, or exhausting system resources. These attacks can disrupt mobile services for thousands of users.

Attack Vectors:

  • • Message flooding (GTP-C/GTP-U)
  • • Resource exhaustion
  • • Protocol state manipulation
  • • Bandwidth consumption

Impact Areas:

  • • Service availability
  • • Network performance
  • • User connectivity
  • • Emergency services

Technical Background

GTP Protocol Vulnerabilities
Inherent weaknesses exploitable for DoS attacks

Control Plane (GTP-C):

  • • No built-in rate limiting
  • • Stateful session management
  • • Complex message processing
  • • Memory-intensive operations

User Plane (GTP-U):

  • • High-volume data processing
  • • Tunnel state maintenance
  • • Bandwidth-intensive operations
  • • Limited validation mechanisms

Common Weaknesses:

Authentication:
  • • Weak source validation
  • • No message authentication
Resource Management:
  • • Unbounded memory allocation
  • • No connection limits
Error Handling:
  • • Poor error recovery
  • • Resource leaks

DoS Attack Types

1. Flooding Attacks

GTP-C Message Flooding
Overwhelming control plane with excessive signaling

Attack Methodology:

  1. Identify target GTP-C endpoint
  2. Generate high-volume Create PDP Context requests
  3. Use randomized source IPs and TEIDs
  4. Overwhelm session management resources

The attacker sends a high rate of Create PDP Context Request messages, forcing the target node to allocate resources and state for each request, eventually leading to resource exhaustion.

GTP-C Flooding Script
1
2from scapy.all import *
3// ... existing code ...
4
GTP-U Message Flooding
Overwhelming user plane with excessive data

Attack Methodology:

  1. Identify target GTP-U endpoint
  2. Generate high-volume data packets
  3. Use randomized source IPs and TEIDs
  4. Overwhelm data plane resources

The attacker sends a high rate of data packets, forcing the target node to allocate resources and state for each packet, eventually leading to resource exhaustion.

GTP-U Flooding Attack
1
2from scapy.all import *
3// ... existing code ...
4
TEID Exhaustion
Exhausting system resources by flooding with invalid TEIDs

Attack Methodology:

  1. Identify target system
  2. Generate high-volume TEID requests
  3. Use randomized TEIDs
  4. Overwhelm system resources

The attacker sends a high rate of TEID requests, forcing the target node to allocate resources and state for each request, eventually leading to resource exhaustion.

Session Exhaustion Attack
1
2from scapy.all import *
3// ... existing code ...
4
Malformed Packet Flooding
Overwhelming system resources with malformed packets

Attack Methodology:

  1. Identify target system
  2. Generate high-volume malformed packets
  3. Use randomized source IPs and TEIDs
  4. Overwhelm system resources

The attacker sends a high rate of malformed packets, forcing the target node to allocate resources and state for each packet, eventually leading to resource exhaustion.

Malformed Message Attack
1
2from scapy.all import *
3// ... existing code ...
4