Osmocombb: A Tool For Gsm Protocol Level Security Analysis Of Gsm Networks

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Presented at hashdays 2010 by

Harald Welte

The OsmocomBB project is a Free Software implementation of the GSM protocol stack running on a mobile phone. For decades, the cellular industry comprised by cellphone chipset makers and network operators keep their hardware and system-level software as well as GSM protocol stack implementations closed. As a result, it was never possible to send arbitrary data at the lower levels of the GSM protocol stack. Existing phones only allow application-level data to be specified, such as SMS messages, IP over GPRS or circuit-switched data (CSD). Using OsmocomBB, the security researcher finally has a tool equivalent to an Ethernet card in the TCP/IP protocol world: A simple transceiver that will send arbitrary protocol messages to a GSM network. Well-known and established techniques like protocol fuzzing can finally be used in GSM networks and reveal how reliable and fault tolerant the equipment used in the GSM networks really is.