A Qualitative Risk Analysis for the GPRS Technology

Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative risk analysis of the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology. GPRS presents several essential security weaknesses which may lead to security attacks that can compromise the network operation and the data transfer. We perform a detailed threat analysis by identifying the possible attacks that may result from the GPRS security weaknesses. The analyzed threats are categorized into critical areas of GPRS security exposure and further divided into threats that compromise the availability, confidentiality, integrity, privacy, authorization and authentication of the system. Each threat is associated with a qualitative risk value that incorporates the likelihood of the attack and its potential impact on the system. The understanding gained from the analysis is used to classify the threats in low and high risk threats and define the specific areas of GPRS that require additional security measures.