Abstract
Systems and methods for detecting and notifying a mobile device user of an IMSI-catcher are disclosed. The system includes a mobile device installed with an application that collects signal data and wirelessly transmits the data to a server. The application may be part of a remote attestation service and communicates directly with radio interface layer (RIL) to collect telephony network and diagnostic information data from the device’s baseband. The collected data is sent to the server for remote attestation. The method includes detecting anomalies in the signal data from crowd-sourced heuristics and notifying the device user discreetly of the presence of an IMSI-catcher. The system and method provide identification of IMSI catchers with high reliability since the detection is done using crowd-sourced data from many devices and on the server-side, it’s more difficult for an attacker to conceal being identified and to counter the detection.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Wadhwa, Tanmay and Dhillon, Neil, "Imsi-Catcher Detection For Mobile Operating Systems", Technical Disclosure Commons, (April 07, 2017)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/462