[ad_1]
Posted by Roger Piqueras Jover, Yomna Nasser, and Sudhi Herle
Android is the primary cellular working system to introduce superior mobile safety mitigations for each customers and enterprises. Android 14 introduces assist for IT directors to disable 2G assist of their managed gadget fleet. Android 14 additionally introduces a characteristic that disables assist for null-ciphered mobile connectivity.
Hardening community safety on Android
The Android Safety Mannequin assumes that each one networks are hostile to maintain customers protected from community packet injection, tampering, or eavesdropping on person site visitors. Android doesn’t depend on link-layer encryption to deal with this risk mannequin. As an alternative, Android establishes that each one community site visitors must be end-to-end encrypted (E2EE).
When a person connects to mobile networks for his or her communications (information, voice, or SMS), as a result of distinctive nature of mobile telephony, the hyperlink layer presents distinctive safety and privateness challenges. False Base Stations (FBS) and Stingrays exploit weaknesses in mobile telephony requirements to trigger hurt to customers. Moreover, a smartphone can’t reliably know the legitimacy of the mobile base station earlier than trying to connect with it. Attackers exploit this in quite a few methods, starting from site visitors interception and malware sideloading, to classy dragnet surveillance.
Recognizing the far reaching implications of those assault vectors, particularly for at-risk customers, Android has prioritized hardening mobile telephony. We’re tackling well-known insecurities comparable to the danger offered by 2G networks, the danger offered by null ciphers, different false base station (FBS) threats, and baseband hardening with our ecosystem companions.
2G and a historical past of inherent safety threat
The cellular ecosystem is quickly adopting 5G, the most recent wi-fi customary for cellular, and lots of carriers have began to show down 2G service. In the US, for instance, most main carriers have shut down 2G networks. Nevertheless, all present cellular units nonetheless have assist for 2G. Consequently, when out there, any cellular gadget will hook up with a 2G community. This happens routinely when 2G is the one community out there, however this will also be remotely triggered in a malicious assault, silently inducing units to downgrade to 2G-only connectivity and thus, ignoring any non-2G community. This conduct occurs no matter whether or not native operators have already sundown their 2G infrastructure.
2G networks, first applied in 1991, don’t present the identical degree of safety as subsequent cellular generations do. Most notably, 2G networks based mostly on the World System for Cell Communications (GSM) customary lack mutual authentication, which allows trivial Individual-in-the-Center assaults. Furthermore, since 2010, safety researchers have demonstrated trivial over-the-air interception and decryption of 2G site visitors.
The out of date safety of 2G networks, mixed with the power to silently downgrade the connectivity of a tool from each 5G and 4G right down to 2G, is the commonest use of FBSs, IMSI catchers and Stingrays.
Stingrays are obscure but very highly effective surveillance and interception instruments which have been leveraged in a number of situations, starting from doubtlessly sideloading Pegasus malware into journalist telephones to a classy phishing scheme that allegedly impacted a whole lot of hundreds of customers with a single FBS. This Stingray-based fraud assault, which doubtless downgraded gadget’s connections to 2G to inject SMSishing payloads, has highlighted the dangers of 2G connectivity.
To deal with this threat, Android 12 launched a brand new characteristic that allows customers to disable 2G on the modem degree. Pixel 6 was the primary gadget to undertake this characteristic and it’s now supported by all Android units that conform to Radio HAL 1.6+. This characteristic was rigorously designed to make sure that customers are usually not impacted when making emergency calls.
Mitigating 2G safety dangers for enterprises
The business acknowledged the numerous safety and privateness advantages and impression of this characteristic for at-risk customers, and we acknowledged how vital disabling 2G is also for our Android Enterprise prospects.
Enterprises that use smartphones and tablets require robust safety to safeguard delicate information and Mental Property. Android Enterprise offers sturdy administration controls for connectivity security capabilities, together with the power to disable WiFi, Bluetooth, and even information signaling over USB. Beginning in Android 14, enterprise prospects and authorities companies managing units utilizing Android Enterprise will be capable of limit a tool’s capacity to downgrade to 2G connectivity.
The 2G safety enterprise management in Android 14 allows our prospects to configure cellular connectivity based on their threat mannequin, permitting them to guard their managed units from 2G site visitors interception, Individual-in-the-Center assaults, and different 2G-based threats. IT directors can configure this safety as needed, all the time holding the 2G radio off or making certain staff are protected when touring to particular high-risk areas.
These new capabilities are a part of the great set of 200+ administration controls that Android offers IT directors via Android Enterprise. Android Enterprise additionally offers complete audit logging with over 80 occasions together with these new administration controls. Audit logs are a vital a part of any group’s safety and compliance technique. They supply an in depth report of all exercise on a system, which can be utilized to trace down unauthorized entry, determine safety breaches, and troubleshoot system issues.
Additionally in Android 14
The upcoming Android launch additionally tackles the danger of mobile null ciphers. Though all IP-based person site visitors is protected and E2EE by the Android platform, mobile networks expose circuit-switched voice and SMS site visitors. These two explicit site visitors varieties are strictly protected solely by the mobile hyperlink layer cipher, which is totally managed by the community with out transparency to the person. In different phrases, the community decides whether or not site visitors is encrypted and the person has no visibility into whether or not it’s being encrypted.
Current experiences recognized utilization of null ciphers in business networks, which exposes person voice and SMS site visitors (comparable to One-Time Password) to trivial over the air interception. Furthermore, some business Stingrays present performance to trick units into believing ciphering shouldn’t be supported by the community, thus downgrading the connection to a null cipher and enabling site visitors interception.
Android 14 introduces a person choice to disable assist, on the modem-level, for null-ciphered connections. Equally to 2G controls, it’s nonetheless potential to put emergency calls over an unciphered connection. This performance will significantly enhance communication privateness for units that undertake the most recent radio {hardware} abstraction layer (HAL). We count on this new connectivity safety characteristic to be out there in additional units over the subsequent few years as it’s adopted by Android OEMs.
Persevering with to companion to lift the business bar for mobile safety
Alongside our Android-specific work, the crew is often concerned within the growth and enchancment of mobile safety requirements. We actively take part in requirements our bodies comparable to GSMA Fraud and Safety Group in addition to the third Technology Partnership Mission (3GPP), significantly its safety and privateness group (SA3). Our long-term objective is to render FBS threats out of date.
Particularly, Android safety is main a brand new initiative inside GSMA’s Fraud and Safety Group (FASG) to discover the feasibility of contemporary id, belief and entry management strategies that may allow radically hardening the safety of telco networks.
Our efforts to harden mobile connectivity undertake Android’s defense-in-depth technique. We often companion with different inside Google groups as effectively, together with the Android Crimson Staff and our Vulnerability Rewards Program.
Furthermore, in alignment with Android’s openness in safety, we actively companion with prime tutorial teams in mobile safety analysis. For instance, in 2022 we funded through our Android Safety and Privateness Analysis grant (ASPIRE) a challenge to develop a proof-of-concept to guage mobile connectivity hardening in smartphones. The tutorial crew offered the result of that challenge within the final ACM Convention on Safety and Privateness in Wi-fi and Cell Networks.
The safety journey continues
Person safety and privateness, which incorporates the protection of all person communications, is a precedence on Android. With upcoming Android releases, we are going to proceed so as to add extra options to harden the platform towards mobile safety threats.
We sit up for discussing the way forward for telco community safety with our ecosystem and business companions and standardization our bodies. We can even proceed to companion with tutorial establishments to unravel complicated issues in community safety. We see large alternatives to curb FBS threats, and we’re excited to work with the broader business to unravel them.
Particular due to our colleagues who had been instrumental in supporting our mobile community safety efforts: Nataliya Stanetsky, Robert Greenwalt, Jayachandran C, Gil Cukierman, Dominik Maier, Alex Ross, Il-Sung Lee, Kevin Deus, Farzan Karimi, Xuan Xing, Wes Johnson, Thiébaud Weksteen, Pauline Anthonysamy, Liz Louis, Alex Johnston, Kholoud Mohamed, Pavel Grafov
[ad_2]