5 ms·
5G SA networks are only becoming more common in the past year. 5G NSA does not benefit from the same enhanced privacy. At the same time SA is starting to get de
by joecool1029 4y ago
5G SA networks are only becoming more common in the past year. 5G NSA does not benefit from the same enhanced privacy. At the same time SA is starting to get deployed legacy networks are being shut down. One of the reasons it took so long was necessity for user equipment to support NR carrier aggregation, and we're there now.
But we are derailing. All the slides you've linked acknowledge the attempts made in 5G to improve privacy and most of the practical attacks rely on implementation mistakes or downgrade attacks (which should be less possible as legacy networks disappear). I originally responded on the topic to note that for the first time on a global standard there was an attempt to encrypt subscriber identifying data. Earlier standards made no such attempt and were broken in other ways. (For example GSM had two replaced cracked/backdoored encryption standards A5/1 and A5/2 which were replaced by A5/3 and the standard never made any attempt to authenticate towers)
- walterbell 4y agoIt's good that we have progressed from no protection to broken protection. May we continue to progress in the right direction. Practically, 5G phones today remain vulnerable to IMSI catching.
- kjellsbells 4y agoWorth noting that tje ability to catch an IMSI or SUPI in the clear depends on whether the packet core implements concealed identifiers (SUCI) with real encryption. IIRC there are three possible encryption schemes and one of them is "null encryption". I dont know what happens if the cellular provider simply sets that setting, do phones just say "ok" and continue to connect?
- walterbell 4y agoRelated: does the OEM (Apple, Samsung) or baseband radio vendor (Qualcomm) make that decision?