SITCH: Inexpensive Coordinated GSM Anomaly Detection

Architecture and Background

It's recently become easier and less expensive to create malicious GSM Base Transceiver Station (BTS) devices, capable of intercepting and recording phone and sms traffic. Detection methods haven't evolved to be as fast and easy to implement. Wireless situational awareness has a number of challenges.

Vulnerability Analysis

Categorically, these challenges are usually classified under Time, Money, or a lot of both. Provisioning sensors takes time, and the fast stuff usually isn’t cheap. Iterative improvements compound the problem when you need to get software updates to multiple devices in the field.

Exploitation and Demonstrations

I’ll present a prototype platform for GSM anomaly detection (called SITCH) which uses cloud-delivered services to elegantly deploy, manage, and coordinate the information from many independent wireless telemetry sensors (IoT FTW). We’ll talk about options and trade-offs when selecting sensor hardware, securing your sensors, using cloud services for orchestrating firmware, and how to collect and make sense of the data you’ve amassed. Source code for the prototype will be released as well.

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

The target audience for this lecture is the hacker/tinkerer type with strong systems and network experience. A very basic understanding of GSM networks is a plus, but not required. Ashmastaflash is a native of southeast Tennessee and a recent transplant to San Francisco. He entered the security domain through systems and network engineering, spent a number of years in network security tooling and integration, and currently works in R&D for CloudPassage.