Somalia Communications 5G Base Station Unaware

Are false base station attacks a threat to 5G networks?

Abstract: The rapid advancement of 5G networks introduces new security challenges, particularly with the rise of false base station (FBS) attacks. This study investigates the vulnerabilities of 5G networks exploited by FBSs, which hijack communications by mimicking legitimate base stations and compromising user equipment (UE).

Does 5G aka protect against fake base stations?

As described in Section 3.3, 5G AKA provides some resistance against fake base stations. The core network authentication verification using the USIM equipped within the user equipment device can serve to indicate the legitimacy of the base station; the base station legitimacy check fails if the authentication fails.

How does 5g-aka protect against fake base stations?

As we mentioned in Section 3.3, 5G-AKA protects against fake base stations at the NAS layer; therefore, the user equipment can identify a base station as legitimate and add it to R → after the successful NAS connection setup procedure. The user equipment can also obtain the legitimate base station identities from the core network as well.

Does 3GPP 5G NR support a faulty base station?

The base station cannot provide connectivity at some times, which is often temporary, i.e., the faulty base station operates correctly at other times. The 3GPP 5G NR supports such temporary faulty cases not having connectivity, and our work builds on the protocol for such faulty cases.