A team of researchers at Pennsylvania State University has discovered critical security vulnerabilities in several 5G baseband chips. These chips, which are essential for communication between mobile phones and the network, are vulnerable to attacks that could allow hackers to spy on users.
The vulnerabilities were found in chips from Samsung, MediaTek and Qualcomm. They are used in phones from Samsung, Google, OPPO, OnePlus, Motorola and others. Researchers were able to connect phones to these chips via a fake cell tower. Attackers who succeed could then conduct phishing attacks or eavesdrop on user communications.
The researchers shared their findings at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, a major computer security conference. They used a self-developed tool called 5GBaseChecker, which is available today. Available to the public Created for further research by third parties.
‘very serious’
Kai Tu, one of the researchers behind the discovery, says otherwise. Techcrunch The vulnerability is very serious. “The security of 5G has been completely breached.”
According to the researchers, attacks can be carried out in this way completely unnoticed. Moreover, it is possible to downgrade devices to 4G or even older protocols. This makes eavesdropping on people easier.
Samsung and Google have solved it.
Samsung and Google have now confirmed that they have issued patches to fix the vulnerabilities. Chip makers MediaTek and Qualcomm have yet to respond to the security breaches.
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