Hackers can hijack data over LTE using 'aLTEr' attack
Hackers could hijack your browsing session and snoop on the websites you visit over an LTE connection using an attack called aLTEr.
According to university researchers, the attack technique abuses a second layer of LTE connectivity called the data link layer, normally designed to protect data going across LTE with encryption, as well as organising how resources are accessed on the network and correcting transmission errors. But aLTEr has been designed to redirect network requests and hijack browsing sessions, as well as redirect network requests, through DNS spoofing.
"The aLTEr attack exploits the fact that LTE user data is encrypted in counter mode (AES-CTR) but not integrity protected, which allows us to modify the message payload: the encryption algorithm is malleable, and an adversary can modify a ciphertext into another ciphertext which later decrypts to a related plaintext," explained David Rupprecht, Katharina Kohls, Thorsten Holz, and Christina Pöpper, from Ruhr-Universität Bochum and New York University Abu Dhabi.
