Evaluating MAPSec by marking attack graphs

Abstract

MAPSec has recently been introduced as a security protocol for mobile telecommunication networks in the midst of numerous threats and vulnerabilities. Our initial study reveals that MAPSec can only provide protection coverage to a minor portion of the total network vulnerabilities. Motivated by this discovery, we have devised a toolkit-Cellular Network Vulnerability Assessment Toolkit for Evaluation (eCAT) to identify: (1) Exact protection coverage of MAPSec, in terms of percentage of attacks prevented; (2) Other kinds of security protocols required in addition to MAPSec; and (3) The most vulnerable network areas. We use the results from eCAT in Coverage Measurement Formulas (CMF) to identify other vulnerabilities. Results from eCAT are dually useful in that they not only reveal MAPSec's limited effectiveness but also provide insights into overall network vulnerabilities.

Cellular Network Security

“…This fact was recently confirmed by a security evaluation of cellular networks [13] that showed the damage potential of a compromised service node to be much greater than the damage potential of compromised signaling messages. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to standardize a scheme for protecting service nodes in the interest of not only preventing node impersonation attacks but also preventing the corruption from propagating to other service nodes.…”

“…To protect all types of signaling message protocols and ensure that messages are secured not only on the links between service nodes but also on the intermediate service nodes (that is, secured end to end), and prevent service logic corruption from propagating to other service nodes, the End-to-End Security (EndSec) protocol was proposed [13].…”

“…Hence, aCAT can be extended with security protocol evaluation capabilities into a tool [13] called Cellular Network Vulnerability Assessment Toolkit for evaluation (eCAT). eCAT allows users to quantify the benefits of security solutions by removing attack effects from attack graphs based on the defenses provided.…”

“…eCAT was developed to evaluate new security protocols before their deployment. Though the design goals and threat model of these security protocols are common knowledge, eCAT was designed to find (1) the effective protection coverage of these security protocols in terms of percentage of attacks prevented; (2) the other kinds of security schemes required to tackle the attacks that can evade the security protocol under observation; and (3) the most vulnerable network areas (also called hotspots) [13].…”