Discovered by university researchers in Singapore, vulnerabilities have been found in 5G modems produced by Qualcomm and MediaTek leaving 714 5G phones open to what is being called a “5Ghoul attack.” There are 14 vulnerabilities in the affected systems and while 10 of them have been disclosed publicly, four remain undisclosed due to security reasons. The attacks can lead to mobile 5G service freezing or getting dropped on a smartphone temporarily. Phones under attack also could find a 5G signal getting downgraded to 4G.
The 5Ghoul attack requires a phone get connected to a rougue 5G base station
The researchers also discovered 714 5G smartphones in the marketplace today that were/are affected by the vulnerabilities although the number could be higher because “firmware code is often shared across different modem versions.” The report notes that the vulnerabilities are easy to exploit over-the-air by the attackers if they simply have a setup that pretends to be a legitimate 5G base station. The attacker does not need to know any information from the user’s SIM card to exploit the flaws of the affected 5G modems.
Here is a list of smartphones that were/are open to getting attacked by 5Ghoul
A large number of phone manufacturers have devices susceptible to a 5G attack
The list of affected smartphones is long. If your phone is on the list, make sure that you have installed all updates available to your phone. The list includes:
