Towards a SIP-based DDoS Attack to the 4G Network

Cellular networks are fundamental infrastructures nowadays, so that any communication problem could affect the user in different ways, from accessing social networks up to personal safety issues. In this work, we explore the feasibility of carrying out a DDoS attack to the Home Subscriber Server of the 4G network through non-3GPP access, i.e. access points that are not specified by the Third Generation Partnership Project, in particular using the SIP register procedure. A previous study on a DDoS attack to UMTS Network showed that injecting 2500 requests in every 4.7s time window is possible to reduce the HLR capability to serve legitimate requests by 93%, and that such an attack can be mounted with a few hundred devices. A limit to that attacking approach is that we would require mobile devices that need to connect to an eNodeB (cellular base station). Instead, in the approach proposed in this paper we carry out a preliminary study to explore the possibility of using devices that are generically connected to the Internet: this means that the population of devices that can be leveraged to mount the attack is wider than in the first case; furthermore, the constraint of having legitimate SIM modules is removed.