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Insecurity in Public-Safety Communications: APCO Project 25

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Abstract

APCO Project 25 (P25) radio networks are perhaps the most widely-deployed digital radio technology currently in use by emergency first-responders across the world. This paper presents the results of an investigation into the security aspects of the P25 communication protocol. The investigation uses a new software-defined radio approach to expose the vulnerabilities of the lowest layers of the protocol stack. We identify a number of serious security flaws which lead to practical attacks that can compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of P25 networks.

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© 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering

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Glass, S., Muthukkumarasamy, V., Portmann, M., Robert, M. (2012). Insecurity in Public-Safety Communications: APCO Project 25. In: Rajarajan, M., Piper, F., Wang, H., Kesidis, G. (eds) Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. SecureComm 2011. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 96. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31909-9_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31909-9_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-31908-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-31909-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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