More than 150 cellular networks worldwide have rolled out LTE-M (LTE-Machine Type Communication) and/or
NB-IoT (Narrow Band Internet of Things) technologies to support massive IoT services such as smart metering and environmental monitoring. Such cellular IoT services share the existing cellular network architecture with non-IoT (e.g., smartphone) ones. When they are newly integrated into the cellular network, new security vulnerabilities may happen from imprudent integration. In this work, we explore the security vulnerabilities of the cellular IoT from both system-integrated and service-integrated aspects. We discover several vulnerabilities spanning cellular standard design defects, network operation slips, and IoT device implementation flaws. Threateningly, they allow an adversary to remotely identify IP addresses and phone numbers assigned to cellular IoT devices, interrupt their power saving services, and launch various attacks, including data/text spamming, battery draining, device hibernation against them. We validate these vulnerabilities over five major cellular IoT carriers in the U.S.
and Taiwan using their certified cellular IoT devices. The attack evaluation result shows that the adversary can raise an IoT data bill by up to $226 with less than 120 MB spam traffic, increase an IoT text bill at a rate of $5 per second, and prevent an IoT device from entering/leaving power saving mode; moreover, cellular IoT devices may suffer from denial of IoT services. We finally propose, prototype, and evaluate recommended solutions.
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A Billion Open Interfaces for Eve and Mallory: MitM, DoS, and Tracking Attacks on iOS and macOS Through Apple Wireless Direct Link
Apple Wireless Direct Link (AWDL) is a key protocol in Apple’s ecosystem used by over one billion iOS and macOS devices for device-to-device communications. AWDL is a proprietary extension of the IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) standard and integrates with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for providing services such as Apple AirDrop. We conduct the first security and privacy analysis of AWDL and its integration with BLE. We uncover several security and privacy vulnerabilities ranging from design flaws to implementation bugs leading to a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack enabling stealthy modification of files transmitted via AirDrop, denial-of-service (DoS) attacks preventing communication, privacy leaks that enable user identification and long-term tracking undermining MAC address randomization, and DoS attacks enabling targeted or simultaneous crashing of all neighboring devices. The flaws span across AirDrop’s BLE discovery mechanism, AWDL synchronization, UI design, and Wi-Fi driver implementation. Our analysis is based on a combination of reverse engineering of protocols and code supported by analyzing patents. We provide proof-of-concept implementations and demonstrate that the attacks can be mounted using a low-cost ($20) micro:bit device and an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi card. We propose practical and effective countermeasures. While Apple was able to issue a fix for a DoS attack vulnerability after our responsible disclosure, the other security and privacy vulnerabilities require the redesign of some of their services.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1740907
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10130323
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 28th USENIX Security Symposium
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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