Jiska Classen (Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam), Alexander Heinrich (TU Darmstadt, Germany), Fabian Portner (TU Darmstadt, Germany), Felix Rohrbach (TU Darmstadt, Germany), Matthias Hollick (TU Darmstadt, Germany)

Apple has integrated satellite communication into their latest iPhones, enabling emergency communication, road- side assistance, location sharing with friends, iMessage, and SMS. This technology allows communication when other wireless services are unavailable. However, the use of satellites poses restrictions on bandwidth and delay, making it difficult to use modern communication protocols with their security and privacy guarantees. To overcome these challenges, Apple designed and implemented a proprietary satellite communication protocol to address these limitations. We are the first to successfully reverse-engineer this protocol and analyze its security and privacy properties. In addition, we develop a simulation-based testbed for testing emergency services without causing emergency calls. Our tests reveal protocol and infrastructure design issues. For example, compact protocol messages come at the cost of missing integrity protection and require an internet-based setup phase. We further demonstrate various restriction bypasses, such as misusing location sharing to send arbitrary text messages on old iOS versions, and sending iMessages over satellite from region-locked countries. These bypasses allow us to overcome censorship and operator control of text messaging services.

View More Papers

SongBsAb: A Dual Prevention Approach against Singing Voice Conversion...

Guangke Chen (Pengcheng Laboratory), Yedi Zhang (National University of Singapore), Fu Song (Key Laboratory of System Software (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and State Key Laboratory of Computer Science, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Science; Nanjing Institute of Software Technology), Ting Wang (Stony Brook University), Xiaoning Du (Monash University), Yang Liu (Nanyang Technological University)

Read More

SKILLPoV: Towards Accessible and Effective Privacy Notice for Amazon...

Jingwen Yan (Clemson University), Song Liao (Texas Tech University), Mohammed Aldeen (Clemson University), Luyi Xing (Indiana University Bloomington), Danfeng (Daphne) Yao (Virginia Tech), Long Cheng (Clemson University)

Read More

CHAOS: Exploiting Station Time Synchronization in 802.11 Networks

Sirus Shahini (University of Utah), Robert Ricci (University of Utah)

Read More

OrbID: Identifying Orbcomm Satellite RF Fingerprints

Cédric Solenthaler (ETH Zurich), Joshua Smailes (University of Oxford), Martin Strohmeier (armasuisse Science & Technology)

Read More