New types of denial of service attacks threatened the security of mobile data networks, a senior telecoms security researcher warned last week. Krishan Sabnani, vice president of networking research at Bell Labs, said inherent weaknesses in the mobile IP protocol allow the launch of attacks that are relatively straightforward to mount but hard to detect and thwart. The attacks would take the form of repeatedly setting up and releasing connections, for example, a form of attack analogous with the SYN Flood assaults that have long being a problem on the fixed-line (wired) internet. Other attacks might rely on preventing mobile devices from going into a dormant mode, thereby draining battery life. "We need to especially monitor the mobile networks – with limited bandwidth and terminal battery — for DOS attacks," Sabnani said during a session at the Cyber Infrastructure Protection Conference at City College of New York last Thursday, Network World reports. Worse still the resources needed to launch an attack might be out of all proportion to the damage that could be inflicted, Sabnani suggested.

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