Gotta Detect 'Em All: Fake Base Station and Multi-Step Attack Detection in Cellular Networks
Kazi Samin Mubasshir
34th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security '25) · Day 3 · Network Security 3: BLE and Cellular
In an era where cellular connectivity is ubiquitous, the foundational security assumption that devices connect to legitimate network infrastructure is increasingly challenged. This talk, "Gotta Detect 'Em All: Fake Base Station and Multi-Step Attack Detection in Cellular Networks," presented by Kazi Samin Mubasshir, delves into the pervasive and critical threat posed by **Fake Base Stations (FBS)**, often known as IMSI catchers or stingrays. These malicious stations exploit a fundamental vulnerability in cellular protocols: the lack of authentication during the initial setup phase, allowing them to masquerade as legitimate network towers and intercept user communications.
AI review
Solid systems-security research that earns its place at USENIX. The combination of a purpose-built large-scale dataset (Powder testbed, 21 MSA scenarios), a stateful LSTM+attention pipeline for FBS detection, and GNN-based graph classification for multi-step attacks is a coherent and novel contribution — not a retread. The 96%/2.96% FPR numbers for FBS and the sub-1ms inference on an Android app are the kind of metrics that turn a paper into something deployable.