Unblocking Stolen Mobile Devices Using SS7-MAP Vulnerabilities: Exploiting the Relationship between IMEI and IMSI for EIR Access

Abstract

The increase in usage of mobile phones and the relative increase in the number of mobile phone thefts have imposed an overhead on securely retrieving the stolen or missing devices. While the mobile security researchers try to figure out various mechanisms to track such devices, attackers on the other hand are trying to exploit weaknesses in the mobile network system to dissipate into the dark side with stolen devices. In this paper, we present how the SS7- MAP protocol can be misused to help an attacker to unblock the device from the stolen list and use it normally.