Wireless networking has witnessed a tremendous growth in recent years. Wireless networks offer attractive flexibility and coverage to network operators and users. Ubiquitous network coverage, for local and wide areas, can be provided without the cost of deploying and maintaining wired-based infrastructures. The current wireless networks are based on the concept of (radio) cells, which divide a telephone service zone into small areas for efficient use of low-power transmitters with minimum interference. The terminal devices are generally unintelligent terminals, meaning that the call management, routing, and other services are handled in the network. The terminals can move from one area to another, requiring their calls to remain uninterrupted during mobility. A simplified architecture of the wireless network is depicted in Figure 1.1. When a mobile terminal is turned on, it locates a nearby cell, which tells it what radio channels and what transmission power to use. As the terminal moves, it will repeat this process as it enters new cells. The mobile terminals identify themselves to the network using a unique identifier (ID), having two components that we denote, temporarily, by the electronic serial number (ESN) and the mobile identification number (MIN). While the first component physically identifies the terminal, the second identifies the terminal holder. The second component is actually the telephone number. The ESN and MIN are continuously validated by the network. A common attack on the communication systems, to obtain fraudulent services, is called cloning attack, in which the ESN and MIN are duplicated in another terminal and submitted to the system by the other terminal. To perform its tasks, a mobile communication system implements several fundamental functions, including call management, call billing, call routing, data communication, and data protection. For billing needs, the mobile communication system handling the communication connection is responsible for sending to the communication’s service provider a billing record, translating the raw connection details, according to rates and plans, into particular charges (for the MIN holder). The signal carriers, involved in the connection establishment, set up accounts with each other for the services provided on the other networks. End users typically pay a combination of monthly service charges and per-minute charges, although prepaid plans with only per-minute charges are becoming more popular.
The various wireless network technologies, currently used to support mobile communication systems, have very different approaches to provide security. For example, one can notice that (a) the early analog cell phones have essentially no security capabilities; (b) the North American Digital Standards have voice privacy using an encryption that is commonly known as presenting various weaknesses; and (c) the European GSM standards support voice encryption, but the GSM networks are subject to a large range of straightforward attacks (as it will be shown in the subsequent chapters).

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