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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."

14 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.

    1. Re:Backward? by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, apparently DDoS attacks are a common use for botnets. Threaten to take down someone's website unless they pay you can get you $500 - $40,000 depending on the website. Here is a cool story talking about one of those cases. Basically an online casino got threatened with a DDoS attack unless he paid, but he didn't pay. So he worked with the ISP to try to keep the website up (which didn't completely succeed at first), and eventually the guy gave up. Then they started investigating to find out who did it. Interesting read.

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      Qxe4
  2. 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.

    1. Re:I would rather have DOS by archont · · Score: 3, Funny

      Viruses, worms and malware are like entering your house through the window you forgot to close. DDOS is like entering your house by driving an 18-wheeler into your living room. It's significantly easier to close your window than to rebuild your house using architecture that would make a truck bonuce off it.

    2. 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.

    3. 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.

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      Qxe4
  3. 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.

  4. 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/
  5. A couple points not clear in the summary by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative
    There are a couple points that aren't completely clear in the summary. The first is it is talking about connecting to cell phone networks, not WiFi (the best protection against DOS attacks on a wireless network is a baseball bat and a firewall). It is not talking about WiFi, thus the baseball bat defense doesn't work. Quote from the article:

    "One cable modem user with 500Kbps upload capacity can attack over 1 million mobile users simultaneously," he said.

    He then goes on to discuss the types of attacks and statistical techniques you can use to detect them. Honestly I don't see how the problem wouldn't be solved with a firewall. If the mobile devices don't have static IP addresses (some do, I'm not sure what percentage), it will be hard to implement any of the attacks described.

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    Qxe4
    1. Re:A couple points not clear in the summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      The article is an ad for an Alcatel-Lucent IDS/Firewall product. That aside, the two scenarios which are actually attacks (the others aren't really attacks but broken devices and unexpected usage) are relatively unsurprising and straight forward. The first is a denial of service through overloading a stateful network component. (There is a reason why the internet was designed as a dumb network... NAT is going to bite you again, you have been warned.) The second is a classic "make the target do something costly" attack; In this case "something costly" is staying on the network to process small bits of useless data, thus draining the battery.

  6. 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.

  7. 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".

  8. Continuous Preamble by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's real easy to DOS wireless devices. Its called Continuous Preamble. This has been around for years.

  9. Lucky for you... by commodoresloat · · Score: 2, Funny

    you don't have to choose! you can have both!