Characterizing Encrypted Application Traffic through Cellular Radio Interface Protocol

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Islam, Md Ruman, Anwar, Raja Hasnain, Mastorakis, Spyridon, Raza, Muhammad Taqi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Islam, Md Ruman
Anwar, Raja Hasnain
Mastorakis, Spyridon
Raza, Muhammad Taqi
author_facet Islam, Md Ruman
Anwar, Raja Hasnain
Mastorakis, Spyridon
Raza, Muhammad Taqi
contents Modern applications are end-to-end encrypted to prevent data from being read or secretly modified. 5G tech nology provides ubiquitous access to these applications without compromising the application-specific performance and latency goals. In this paper, we empirically demonstrate that 5G radio communication becomes the side channel to precisely infer the user's applications in real-time. The key idea lies in observing the 5G physical and MAC layer interactions over time that reveal the application's behavior. The MAC layer receives the data from the application and requests the network to assign the radio resource blocks. The network assigns the radio resources as per application requirements, such as priority, Quality of Service (QoS) needs, amount of data to be transmitted, and buffer size. The adversary can passively observe the radio resources to fingerprint the applications. We empirically demonstrate this attack by considering four different categories of applications: online shopping, voice/video conferencing, video streaming, and Over-The-Top (OTT) media platforms. Finally, we have also demonstrated that an attacker can differentiate various types of applications in real-time within each category.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_07361
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Characterizing Encrypted Application Traffic through Cellular Radio Interface Protocol
Islam, Md Ruman
Anwar, Raja Hasnain
Mastorakis, Spyridon
Raza, Muhammad Taqi
Networking and Internet Architecture
Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
Modern applications are end-to-end encrypted to prevent data from being read or secretly modified. 5G tech nology provides ubiquitous access to these applications without compromising the application-specific performance and latency goals. In this paper, we empirically demonstrate that 5G radio communication becomes the side channel to precisely infer the user's applications in real-time. The key idea lies in observing the 5G physical and MAC layer interactions over time that reveal the application's behavior. The MAC layer receives the data from the application and requests the network to assign the radio resource blocks. The network assigns the radio resources as per application requirements, such as priority, Quality of Service (QoS) needs, amount of data to be transmitted, and buffer size. The adversary can passively observe the radio resources to fingerprint the applications. We empirically demonstrate this attack by considering four different categories of applications: online shopping, voice/video conferencing, video streaming, and Over-The-Top (OTT) media platforms. Finally, we have also demonstrated that an attacker can differentiate various types of applications in real-time within each category.
title Characterizing Encrypted Application Traffic through Cellular Radio Interface Protocol
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
Cryptography and Security
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.07361