It doesn't matter what the network is doing; the phone needs to disable 2g. There's various ways to get the phone to downgrade to 2g otherwise, eg https://montsecure.com/files/2021_downgrade.pdf
And if you have a modern enough SIM+phone combo, it won’t even display the 2g network as an available network, nor 3G on my device.
I wonder if this mostly hit international SIMs, since they wouldn’t be running the same level of SIM code to prefer various network locks like a local SIM.
Helps you stay under the radar and gov services over SMS is a lot more advanced outside of Canada if you want to do some fraud.
>And if you have a modern enough SIM+phone combo, it won’t even display the 2g network as an available network, nor 3G on my device.
Source? It might just be that your carrier retired its 2g/3g network, not that the phone/sim refuses 2g/3g connections. If some cell tower popped up claiming to 2g/3g, your phone still might happily connect.
Unfortunately, I think there's no way for a SIM card to indicate to the phone that it would like it to please never connect to any 2G (or any non-mutually-authenticated) network.
Absent that, maybe this happens via a carrier profile (or equivalent mechanism)?
I don't think that matters, since the phone has no way of knowing from the SIM card alone whether it should still connect to 2G networks or not.
It sounds like a good idea to at least restrict 2G connections to non-roaming scenarios, but then you have the next practical problem: How does your baseband know that you're abroad?
Sure, all solvable at the application layer (the phone could use location heuristics to figure out where it is etc.), but not trivial and full of edge cases that could easily result in your phone mysteriously not connecting while abroad or, worse, not being able to make an emergency call or similar.
That's incredible, here in Australia they not only shut down all 2G networks almost a decade ago, but they've already shut down 3G as well!
Although now looking at Wikipedia there are a lot more 2G networks sticking around than I realised, still hard for me to believe given what's happened here!
It doesn't matter what the network is doing; the phone needs to disable 2g. There's various ways to get the phone to downgrade to 2g otherwise, eg https://montsecure.com/files/2021_downgrade.pdf
Android has it as a toggle: https://source.android.com/docs/security/features/cellular-s...
iPhone disables it for phones in lockdown mode.
And if you have a modern enough SIM+phone combo, it won’t even display the 2g network as an available network, nor 3G on my device.
I wonder if this mostly hit international SIMs, since they wouldn’t be running the same level of SIM code to prefer various network locks like a local SIM.
Helps you stay under the radar and gov services over SMS is a lot more advanced outside of Canada if you want to do some fraud.
>And if you have a modern enough SIM+phone combo, it won’t even display the 2g network as an available network, nor 3G on my device.
Source? It might just be that your carrier retired its 2g/3g network, not that the phone/sim refuses 2g/3g connections. If some cell tower popped up claiming to 2g/3g, your phone still might happily connect.
source = Rogers SIM in me phone
my Telus/Bell SIM shows the 3G network tho
Unfortunately, I think there's no way for a SIM card to indicate to the phone that it would like it to please never connect to any 2G (or any non-mutually-authenticated) network.
Absent that, maybe this happens via a carrier profile (or equivalent mechanism)?
Ah, so the attack might depend on whether your phone is set to allow roaming or not. Maybe.
But I only have an option for data roaming on/off, not roaming entirely.
I don't think that matters, since the phone has no way of knowing from the SIM card alone whether it should still connect to 2G networks or not.
It sounds like a good idea to at least restrict 2G connections to non-roaming scenarios, but then you have the next practical problem: How does your baseband know that you're abroad?
Sure, all solvable at the application layer (the phone could use location heuristics to figure out where it is etc.), but not trivial and full of edge cases that could easily result in your phone mysteriously not connecting while abroad or, worse, not being able to make an emergency call or similar.
That's incredible, here in Australia they not only shut down all 2G networks almost a decade ago, but they've already shut down 3G as well!
Although now looking at Wikipedia there are a lot more 2G networks sticking around than I realised, still hard for me to believe given what's happened here!
You do realize it’s a fake 2g/3g network and most phones don’t care. They will happily connect to whatever they support.
Only if they’re not already connected to a better network, no?
Which is interesting in that they very publicly shut down the 3G network last year.