CAPEC-606

Weakening of Cellular Encryption
High
Draft
2015-11-09
00h00 +00:00
2018-07-31
00h00 +00:00
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Descriptions CAPEC

An attacker, with control of a Cellular Rogue Base Station or through cooperation with a Malicious Mobile Network Operator can force the mobile device (e.g., the retransmission device) to use no encryption (A5/0 mode) or to use easily breakable encryption (A5/1 or A5/2 mode).

Informations CAPEC

Prerequisites

Cellular devices that allow negotiating security modes to facilitate backwards compatibility and roaming on legacy networks.

Skills Required

Adversaries can purchase and implement rogue BTS stations at a cost effective rate, and can push a mobile device to downgrade to a non-secure cellular protocol like 2G over GSM or CDMA.

Mitigations

Use of hardened baseband firmware on retransmission device to detect and prevent the use of weak cellular encryption.
Monitor cellular RF interface to detect the usage of weaker-than-expected cellular encryption.

Related Weaknesses

CWE-ID Weakness Name

CWE-757

 Selection of Less-Secure Algorithm During Negotiation ('Algorithm Downgrade')
A protocol or its implementation supports interaction between multiple actors and allows those actors to negotiate which algorithm should be used as a protection mechanism such as encryption or authentication, but it does not select the strongest algorithm that is available to both parties.

Submission

Name Organization Date Date release
CAPEC Content Team The MITRE Corporation 2015-11-09 +00:00

Modifications

Name Organization Date Comment
CAPEC Content Team The MITRE Corporation 2018-07-31 +00:00 Updated Attack_Motivation-Consequences
The information presented on CVE Find originates from several carefully selected reference sources. CVE data is provided by MITRE Corporation and the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). The Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog is sourced from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), while EPSS scores come from FIRST.org. Additionally, data regarding software weaknesses (CWE) and common attack patterns (CAPEC) is maintained by MITRE Corporation, and information on hardware and software configurations (CPE) is provided by the NVD.