Solutions to Parallel and Distributed Computing Problems: Lessons from Biological Sciences

10.7 NEURAL FRAUD DETECTION IN MOBILE-PHONE SYSTEMS

With the increasing popularity of the wireless network, the security issues for mobile users could be even more serious than we expect [2, 22]. Before mobile phones became widely popular, the greatest threat to network security in most organizations was dial-up lines. While dial-up lines still merit attention, the risks they pose are minor when compared to wireless and mobile connections. To break the system, one needs only to buy a piece of portable radio equipment, such as a scanner, to program a genuine mobile clone to debit calls from a genuine mobile phone, and register the frequencies where mobile phones operate in the surrounding areas. Then, the person committing the fraud may, for example, park his or her car near a shopping mall, jot down various frequencies, transfer the data to clones, and then pass them to whomever may be interested in these cloned mobiles. Mobile phones will change many aspects of our lives forever, but not until potential users become convinced of the security of the mobile networks.

10.7.1 System to Identify Probable Imposters

The system to identify probable imposters (SIPI) system has been designed to identify “probable” imposters using cloned phones. Boukerche and Notare's [2] approach to identifying fraudulent calls is to classify the mobile-phone users into a set of groups according to their log files [2, 24]. They assume that all relevant characteristics that identify the users will be stored ...