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New Denial-of-Service Attacks Threaten Wireless Data Networks

Posted by Soulskill on from the filling-the-ether dept.

alphadogg writes "Forget spam, viruses, worms, malware, and phishing. These threats are apparently old-school when compared to a new class of denial-of-service attacks that threaten wireless data networks. The threats were outlined in a talk in NYC Thursday by Krishan Sabnani, vice president of networking research at Bell Labs, at the Cyber Infrastructure Protection Conference at City College of New York. Sabnani said they are the result of inherent weaknesses in Mobile IP, a protocol that uses tunneling and complex network triangulation to allow mobile devices to move freely from one network to another. 'We need to especially monitor the mobile networks — with limited bandwidth and terminal battery — for DOS attacks,' Sabnani said, adding that the newest DOS attacks on wireless networks involve repeatedly establishing and releasing connections. These attacks are easy to launch and hard to detect, he said."

6 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Backward? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think they got this backward. The DoS attack is the old school one since there is limited money in it (unless you are an organization that does DoS threat blackmailing, but even those don't make the kind of money that more modern attacks can generate). DoS is the old school one, not the worms, malware, and phishing that the summary claims are old school.

  2. What attack? by yourassOA · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The article doesn't say anything. New "old school" Dos attacks. I feel dumber for having been suckered into reading the article.

  3. Easy to Detect, hard to trace by sam0737 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    DoS should be easy to detect...you know when something is DoS'ed or Slashdotted. I think he means it's hard to trace the source.

  4. Mobile virus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Associated with a virus for mobile this technique can become a huge problem for the providers!

  5. Re:I would rather have DOS by dk90406 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Keeping your analogy, a DoS or DDoS is IMO like keeping you and me from entering (or exiting) my house through doors or windows. It will not cost me a lot, unless I am a company, depending on a lot of traffic through the door.
    Your truck would be an ICE breaker that opens my house for all. Not the same, since I would notice a locked down house, but not necessarily someone who crept through my window.

  6. Re:I would rather have DOS by phantomfive · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In this case, a DOS attack can cause you significant pain. It is talking about DOS over a cell phone network, where depending on your dataplan, you may end up with a thousand dollar phone bill. Ouch. Personally I'd rather have my harddrive wiped

    Also, one of the attacks mentioned can drain your battery quickly. Not THAT bad, but still rather annoying.

    --
    Qxe4