JeffReed – Ramanisblog

Find here below the Communication from Virginia Tech College of Engineering,US to The Department of Commerce,US.

You can take down any LTE network with a simple $650 piece of gear.

“Every cellphone grid is vulnerable to this technique, including FirstNet, the emergency communications network designed after 9/11. According to the authors, “it’s relatively easy to do” by anyone. In fact, if a terrorist group spent just a bit more on a cheap, readily available power amplifier, it could take down a region as large as New York State.

The paper, by Jeff Reed—director of the wireless research group at Virginia Tech—and research assistant Marc Lichtman, says that it would be hard to defend against such an attack. The problem, they say, relates to structural, intrinsic vulnerabilities to the LTE architecture…

Your phone is constantly syncing with the base station. If you can disrupt that synchronization, you will not be able to send or receive data. There are multiple weak spots-about eight different attacks are possible. The LTE signal is very complex, made up of many subsystems, and in each case, if you take out one subsystem, you take out the entire base station. Any communications engineer would be able to figure this stuff out.”

http://gizmodo.com/5960904/terrorists-can-take-down-an-entire-citys-lte-network-for-just-650

The Report:

November 8, 2012
Lawrence Strickling
Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information
Department of Commerce
1401 Constitution Avenue NW
HCHB Room 7324
Washington DC 20230
Att: FirstNet Conceptual Network NOI
Enclosed we provide a brief response to the FirstNet NOI regarding the conceptual network
architecture. The focus on our comments is on the information assurance aspects of LTE and
contains a summary of some of our preliminary analysis. This work is still in progress and we
would be pleased to share details of our current and future findings on this issue.
Sincerely,
Dr. Jeffrey H. Reed
Director, Wireless@ Virginia Tech.

Conclusion
These comments describe extremely effective attacks can be realized, using fairly low
complexity. It would be in the interest of public safety to take measures to reduce the
vulnerability of Public Safety LTE, and lower the likelihood of an effective jamming attack.
Certainly there are important cost advantage of keeping the public safety LTE system compatible
with commercial devices and systems. Seeking solutions that achieve this compatibility while

providing protection are desirable. We thank you for considering our views, and are eager to
address any subsequent questions.

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/va_tech_response.pdf