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Alerts This Week
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4G and 5G Security Flaws Allow Location Tracking Threats

Calendar Feb 27, 2019 • User Avatar Brittany Day
1 min read
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Topics%20covered

Topics Covered

network threat wireless protocols location tracking 5g security 4g flaws telecom vulnerabilities
Over the past 18 months, revelations about wireless carriers selling smartphone location data to third parties have forced telecoms to promise reform. Worryingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, these user protections have been slow to actually materialize. Even if carriers shape up, though, an attacker can still track a smartphone's location and snoop on phone calls thanks to newly discovered flaws in 4G and even 5G protocols.

A group of researchers from Purdue University and the University of Iowa will present their findings Tuesday at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego. They note that their discoveries, first reported by TechCrunch, are particularly concerning since the 5G standard was specifically developed to better protect against these types of attacks.

The link for this article located at Wired is no longer available.