Wireless Communications Security

8 Security Risks in the Wireless Environment

8.1 Overview

This chapter outlines potential security risks in the wireless environment and presents concerns of the wireless security mechanisms. Some typical security holes are related to the network, user equipment, applications, communication links and signalling – although the role of human errors can never be underestimated in the overall security. This chapter also summarizes some key attack types such as eavesdropping, data altering, overloading and some less typical threats such as RF jammers and Electro‐Magnetic Pulses (EMPs). Also specialized techniques like electron microscope and power consumption analysis are discussed. Finally, some important impacts of wireless security on the utilities and applications are presented, and key protection methods are discussed as guidelines for network operators, device manufacturers, smartcard providers, app developers and users.

It can be generalized that the single most important security threat in any environment is related to human error. Even in the most secure platforms and delivery systems, the weakest link may be a mistake with the complying of the security process [9,12]. There are many examples related to this topic, e.g., protected delivery of security keys between SIM card production and the MNO/customer of the card as reported in Ref. [26]. In this specific case, the external attacker was able to capture a part of the user‐specific Ki keys because they were delivered ...