False Base Stations Measurement and Detection in Indoor Environment

Mobile radio access networks can be subject to various types of attacks compromising privacy, availability, or integrity of communication. One of the well-recognized risks pertains to the presence of false base stations (FBSs), which have the potential to redirect communication away from legitimate ones or may be employed to gather information about users. This paper describes an experiment involving an indoor-operated FBS, running on a general-purpose software defined radio device. We present the measurement results of primary synchronization sequences power for the false and legitimate base station, and sketch a simple method to identify the presence of such FBS.