[Openbts-discuss] OpenBTS / E100 & GSM attacks.

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Hacker Fantastic hackerfantastic at googlemail.com
Fri Feb 14 17:45:35 UTC 2014


Hi Luca,
            Whilst I agree that arming a bunch of script kiddies is
completely detrimental to the security of everyone I must point out that
there are many practical applications for the use of such technology to
assist people working in security. For instance on multiple occasions I
have been told "It is GPRS, not WIFI" which is a complete misunderstanding
of the vulnerabilities in current mobility solutions used by many. I have
no intention to weaken the state of security any further than it is but I
am always happy to assist those who are interested in building stronger
defences. When the detection tools become better it will be less of an
issue but as it stands we are still in the infancy of detecting and
preventing such threats because there is misunderstanding about the
triviality of exploitation. I have no intention to provide material that
could enable anyone to exploit others, I merely aimed to highlight what is
possible and open the question as to how it can be accounted for in
traditional security defences.

Kind Regards,
Matthew


On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 5:27 PM, Luca Bongiorni <
luca.bongiorni1 at studenti.unimi.it> wrote:

> Hi Matthew, all,
>
> IMHO releasing such kind of image will just increase the number of script
> kiddies around that could mess with 2G networks (and that is a bloody
> seriously problem).
> From my experience (e.g. after releasing some slides
> http://www.slideshare.net/iazza/dcm-final-23052013fullycensored ) I have
> always been asked to release sources/scripts/etc. which I have promptly
> denied.
> The reason is pretty simple as you can imagine... If someone own an USRP
> or an OsmocomBB-MS... and also know just a bit of ETSI specs, SDR and
> C++... It is unlikely they will need a ready-to-deploy image.
>
> Obviously that is just my two cents.
> Just be wise about sharing it.
>
> Cheers,
> Luca
>
> Hi Michael,
>                  It is my intention to share an image and speed the
> process up for other researchers interested in GSM attacks and building
> simulations in their labs. At this time there are code changes I want to
> expand upon before I do (predominantly cosmetic changes and making it more
> feature useful from the python script). I am also hoping that enhanced
> detection of fakeBTS attacks will be expanded upon by the osmocom-bb
> toolkit (the launch of the detection capability occurred in December 2013
> at CCC.) which would sufficiently detect anyone attempting to use tools of
> this nature in an illegal way. Most of the work I did can be recreated from
> the slides previously provided. If you are interested in the E100 platform,
> I spent alot of time exploring its capabilities and re-compiling packages.
> I first started trying to build the firmware from scratch with some
> discussion occurring between myself and the firmware developer at Ettus,
> eventually it became easier to customize the firmware provided by Ettus -
> the most difficult change being a cross-compiled kernel to enable netfilter
> so that IP routing became practical thus allowing for GPRS capabilities. I
> also had issues with the OpenBTS 52MTransceiver application in the more
> recent commits as significant overhaul has begun on changing its
> capabilities. I eventually settled on r6718 version as this provided GPRS
> capabilities and also was the last version functioning with the
> 52MTransceiver application. Most of the firmware I had to rebuild from
> source including things not available in package repos such as libpcap,
> asterisk (w/ODBC), odbc, libsqlite and python to get the capabilities I
> needed to demonstrate the practical elements of a GSM attack from an
> embedded device. I will be releasing the firmware image as soon as I tidy
> up some of my python code and detection tools become more effective. If you
> do really need the image for some research purpose then please e-mail me
> directly and I will gladly share a copy with you providing I can understand
> better your requirement for needing an off-the-shelf attack tool for GSM.
>
> Kind Regards,
> Matthew
>
>
> The information contained in this message may be CONFIDENTIAL and is
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>
>


-- 
Matthew Hickey
Tel: +44 7543 661237
Web: http://blog.hackerfantastic.com

Please visit my website for blog postings, status updates and project
information.
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