COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-609

Cellular Traffic Intercept

Cellular traffic for voice and data from mobile devices and retransmission devices can be intercepted via numerous methods. Malicious actors can deploy their own cellular tower equipment and intercept cellular traffic surreptitiously. Additionally, government agencies of adversaries and malicious actors can intercept cellular traffic via the telecommunications backbone over which mobile traffic is transmitted.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

Low

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

Cellular traffic for voice and data from mobile devices and retransmission devices can be intercepted via numerous methods. Malicious actors can deploy their own cellular tower equipment and intercept cellular traffic surreptitiously. Additionally, government agencies of adversaries and malicious actors can intercept cellular traffic via the telecommunications backbone over which mobile traffic is transmitted.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • None

Skills required

  • Medium: Adversaries can purchase hardware and software solutions, or create their own solutions, to capture/intercept cellular radio traffic. The cost of a basic Base Transceiver Station (BTS) to broadcast to local mobile cellular radios in mobile devices has dropped to very affordable costs. The ability of commercial cellular providers to monitor for "rogue" BTS stations is poor in many areas and it is assumed that "rogue" BTS stations exist in urban areas.

Resources required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Read Data

Affected scopes: Confidentiality

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Encryption of all data packets emanating from the smartphone to a retransmission device via two encrypted tunnels with Suite B cryptography, all the way to the VPN gateway at the datacenter.