COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-605

Cellular Jamming

In this attack scenario, the attacker actively transmits signals to overpower and disrupt the communication between a cellular user device and a cell tower. Several existing techniques are known in the open literature for this attack for 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE cellular technology. For example, some attacks target cell towers by overwhelming them with false status messages, while others introduce high levels of noise on signaling channels.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

Low

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

In this attack scenario, the attacker actively transmits signals to overpower and disrupt the communication between a cellular user device and a cell tower. Several existing techniques are known in the open literature for this attack for 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE cellular technology. For example, some attacks target cell towers by overwhelming them with false status messages, while others introduce high levels of noise on signaling channels.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • Lack of anti-jam features in cellular technology (2G, 3G, 4G, LTE)

Skills required

  • Low: This attack can be performed by low capability attackers with commercially available tools.

Resources required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Resource Consumption

Affected scopes: Availability

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Mitigating this attack requires countermeasures employed on both the retransmission device as well as on the cell tower. Therefore, any system that relies on existing commercial cell towards will likely be vulnerable to this attack. By using a private cellular LTE network (i.e., a custom cell tower), jamming countermeasures could be developed and employed.