Title

Denial Of Convenience Attack To Smartphones Using A Fake Wi-Fi Access Point

Keywords

Android; denial-of-service; iPhone; mobile platforms

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel denial-of-service attack targeted at popular smartphones that are used by normal users who are not technology savvy. This type of attack, which we call a denial-of-convenience attack, prevents non-technical savvy victims from utilizing data services by exploiting the connectivity management protocol of smartphones when encountered with a Wi-Fi access point. By setting up a fake Wi-Fi access point without Internet access (using a simple device such as a laptop computer), an attacker can prompt a smartphone with enabled Wi-Fi features to automatically terminate a valid mobile broadband connection and connect to this fake Wi-Fi access point. This, as a result, prevents the targeted smartphone from having any type of Internet connection unless the victim is capable of identifying the attack and manually disabling the Wi-Fi features. We demonstrate that most popular smartphones, including iPhone and Android phones, are vulnerable to denial-of-convenience attacks. To address this attack, we propose implementing a novel Internet-access validation protocol that uses the cellular network to send a secret key phrase to an Internet validation server. Then, it attempts to retrieve this secret key phrase via the newly established Wi-Fi channel to validate the Wi-Fi access point. We have fully developed and evaluated the attacks as well as the defense prototypes that run on Android phones. © 2013 IEEE.

Publication Date

4-15-2013

Publication Title

2013 IEEE 10th Consumer Communications and Networking Conference, CCNC 2013

Number of Pages

164-170

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1109/CCNC.2013.6488441

Socpus ID

84875999255 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84875999255

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