Spoofing cellular data

Question

Is it possible to spoof cellular data? For example place a transceiver some where and communicate with a cell phone similar to wifi spoofing?

That's what Stingray does - so, yes, apparently it is possible — crovers, Oct 27 '16 at 20:51
"spoofing" is the wrong term - you need to search for "rogue cell towers" - you will find many hits — schroeder, Oct 27 '16 at 21:01
yes, it's possible, but for laymen and individual hackers it's too complicted and expensive. — dandavis, Oct 28 '16 at 18:58
@dandavis you can build a rogue tower for ca 400€ + laptop... it requires the ability to install software and follow a detailed guide... It's honestly pretty trivial. — Marcus Müller, Apr 12 '21 at 09:06
@MarcusMüller: Hackers following a "detailed guide"? You'd also have to keep it powered and secure, ideally high up. Things have changed somewhat in 5 years though, let's call it somewhere between "pretty trivial" and "too complicated"... — dandavis, Apr 12 '21 at 18:49
@dandavis seriously, setting up a cellular base station wasn't hard 5 years ago... maybe we're from different backgrounds, but running debian, installing the osmo-bts packages using apt and plugging in an SDR frontend... it's not that complex. — Marcus Müller, Apr 12 '21 at 18:53

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 27 '16 at 21:25

Is it possible to spoof cellular data? For example place a transceiver some where and communicate with a cell phone similar to wifi spoofing?

As shown by state actors (see: stingray) and attackers around the world:

yes. it is. And it's not even very hard.

In fact, GSM has a very weak sense of providing authentification of the network to the user. So all GSM networks are relatively easy to "spoof".

1 Answers1