DENIAL-of-services attacks on cellular networks?

Patrick Traynor of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and his colleagues worry that hackers may have cellphone networks in their sights. New Scientist reports.

DENIAL-of-services (DoS) attacks are a common tactic used by "black hats" intent on bringing down a high-profile website, one owned by a bank or political party, say.

In a standard DoS attack, a network of infected PCs, a "botnet", would swamp a server with so many requests to view a web page that it would be unable to handle legitimate requests. Now Traynor and colleagues have shown how a cellphone network could be the vehicle for an attack that would cut off calls for millions of users.

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emily | 6:25 PM | |
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