COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-614

Rooting SIM Cards

SIM cards are the de facto trust anchor of mobile devices worldwide. The cards protect the mobile identity of subscribers, associate devices with phone numbers, and increasingly store payment credentials, for example in NFC-enabled phones with mobile wallets. This attack leverages over-the-air (OTA) updates deployed via cryptographically-secured SMS messages to deliver executable code to the SIM. By cracking the DES key, an attacker can send properly signed binary SMS messages to a device, which are treated as Java applets and are executed on the SIM. These applets are allowed to send SMS, change voicemail numbers, and query the phone location, among many other predefined functions. These capabilities alone provide plenty of potential for abuse.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

High

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

SIM cards are the de facto trust anchor of mobile devices worldwide. The cards protect the mobile identity of subscribers, associate devices with phone numbers, and increasingly store payment credentials, for example in NFC-enabled phones with mobile wallets. This attack leverages over-the-air (OTA) updates deployed via cryptographically-secured SMS messages to deliver executable code to the SIM. By cracking the DES key, an attacker can send properly signed binary SMS messages to a device, which are treated as Java applets and are executed on the SIM. These applets are allowed to send SMS, change voicemail numbers, and query the phone location, among many other predefined functions. These capabilities alone provide plenty of potential for abuse.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • A SIM card that relies on the DES cipher.

Skills required

  • Medium: This is a sophisticated attack, but detailed techniques are published in open literature.

Resources required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Execute Unauthorized Commands

Affected scopes: Confidentiality, Integrity

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Upgrade the SIM card to use the state-of-the-art AES or the somewhat outdated 3DES algorithm for OTA.