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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."

3 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. I would rather have DOS by dk90406 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    than viruses, worms and malware. DOS can't harm me and my PC(as a private person), only inconvenience. The things are not even comparable. Just another article written by a a journalist who fails to understand basic IT.
    And no, I am not talking about the operating system DOS.

  2. Technical Limitations. by Celeste+R · · Score: 4, Interesting

    DoS is a natural part of the race of technology.

    Can it be used against us? Yes.
    Can we prevent those attacks? Most likely, and with a little time.

    The real question is -how likely- is it to be a problem?

    DoS attacks on the internet can be sent from anywhere.
    DoS attacks on the celluar network can only be sent from within that area. (afaik)

    This limitation alone limits the scope of this type of DoS attack, making it a tool of advance planning and high-profile national security aspects than a tool to be feared by the average Joe.

    --
    There are no perfect answers, only the right questions. More questions at http://foresightandhindsight.blogspot.com/
  3. Just fearmongering by puhuri · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That was total crap, was he selling some solution for it?

    At first, I do not know any large-scale deployment of Mobile-IP. 3G networks provide mobility below IP and they do not use any "complex network triangulation" in it. Mobile-IP does have its weakness, but AFAIK the latest RFCs should provide quite solid (not worse-than-fixed) protection from DOS.

    You can somewhat DOS high-speed data channels in 3G networks by sending packets with at intervals, but that is limited to single sector in base station, so that is not a big problem either. Battery drain DOS can be a real problem, but that is pretty much solved if you close your browser and your data channel is closed. If you do not have active data connections, nobody can sen you packets.

    Again, was it some North-Zimbabwe 3G provider that took hit from 4.5GB data transfer? Last time I checked, it was less than 10 second traffic volume at small-country 3G providers. From "peer-to-peer Web sites".