LTE flaw could be used to snoop, direct users to malicious websites

Long Term Evolution (LTE) device standards can be used to direct users to hostile websites, according to a group of international researchers.

LTE is used by billions of users and was supposed to fix the security loopholes in its predecessor Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications.

The researchers have named the flaw aLTEr, which is due to lack of integrity checks at the lower layers of LTE.

There are two other flaws with LTE, as revealed by the group of researchers, which they have labelled as passive. Users’ data — where they are using their data and how much — can be accessed if there is sniffing hardware within a one-mile radius of the target device.

Sniffing hardware is expensive, one can cost nearly $4,000.

When 4G was introduced, technology wasn’t able to produce the speed which is upto 4G standards, so LTE was introduced. It can be defined as the technology in pursuit of that speed. Networks started using the composite 4G-LTE.