Service providers and telecom carriers form the backbone of communications and commerce in modern economies. Their networks and cell towers deliver the internet itself—and everything that depends on it—to homes, businesses and mobile devices all over the world. And the complexity involved in doing so creates enormous security challenges.

Much has been said of the explosion of applications now driving everything from power grids to Pokemon, but it’s this pervasive global industry that provides the connective tissue for all those billions of end points. An average smartphone may have several dozen applications on it. The potential for backdoors in applications and devices can create even more challenges.

Every one of these components is a potential insertion point for an attacker. Since this industry touches nearly every person and organization, motivations for those attacks—the CHEW involved—can arise from anywhere. Service disruption may be the goal for some attackers, but more often they seek to infiltrate administrative accounts as a means to gain deeper access into the networks of their ultimate marks: end customers, whether they be individuals or large enterprise companies.

Read the full article published April 8, 2020 here: https://www.securityweek.com/attacking-organism-telecom-service-providers by SecurityWeek.