Vulnerability Analysis of LTE Location Services

To meet government requirements for positioning emergency services, Long Term Evolution (LTE), the latest generation of mobile communications popular in North America and Europe, incorporates the ability to ascertain the position of the user equipment via the network. This additional signaling means that there is also the chance that the user position may be vulnerable to being intercepted by unauthorized parties. Several different potential vulnerabilities are explored in this paper and is a proof of concept for three vulnerabilities, including the presence of location data on the network when there is no authorized request for that data active. A series of simulations were constructed to analyze and test the logical flow of messages through the LTE core network and to see what vulnerabilities existed. The first simulation established a baseline, and each additional simulation examined a possible vulnerability.