RE: GPRS security

From: Toni Heinonen (Toni.Heinonen@teleware.fi)
Date: 02/27/02 

Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 22:11:06 +0200
From: "Toni Heinonen" <Toni.Heinonen@teleware.fi>
To: "OPITZ,PAUL (HP-France,ex2)" <paul_opitz@hp.com>, <pen-test@securityfocus.com>

> Does anybody knows well known threats and vulnerabilities in
> the GPRS world
> and countermesures ?

I've heard a lot of fuss going lately about operators protecting their core network well from attacks from the Internet, but forgetting to secure the other end, ie. the mobile station end of the core network. However, I think there's little risk here as the client's traffic is tunneled through the GPRS core. But it's basically IP traffic, and a good IP firewall will protect you. There is only one oddity in the GPRS core, and that is the GPRS tunneling protocol, GTP. It would be nifty to filter on the tunneled packets' headers too or on other GTP-specific information, but I am not aware of any firewalls that understand GTP. One might however think that the Nokia IP430 (or whatever the number was) would be capable of filtering on GTP headers, as it does come from a big GPRS network eq. vendor that also recommends it be used with the GPRS core.

The security of the wireless airway itself is a wholly different question.

TONI HEINONEN
   TELEWARE OY
   Telephone +358 (9) 3434 9123 * Fax +358 (9) 3431 321
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   toni.heinonen@teleware.fi * www.teleware.fi

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