A group of researchers developed a series of attacks against 4G/LTE enabled devices to demonstrate practical attacks and expose vulnerabilities they believe hackers will exploit against LTE access network protocols.
One attack, to which the researchers said all the 1.37 billion LTE-enabled devices are vulnerable, causes a device to leak its GPS coordinates, according to the practical attacks against privacy and availability in 4G/LTE mobile communication systems research paper.
Another attack would allow an assailant to switch a device from a LTE network to a less secure 3G or 2G network potentially enabling a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack.
All of the attacks were carried out using open source software and $1,400 worth of readily available hardware, the researchers said.
