GUTI Reallocation Demystified: Cellular Location Tracking with Changing Temporary Identifier

Abstract

To keep subscribers’ identity confidential, a cellular network operator must use a temporary identifier instead of a permanent one according to the 3GPP standard. Temporary identifiers include Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity (TMSI) and Globally Unique Temporary Identifier (GUTI) for GSM/3G and Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks, respectively. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that carriers fail to protect subscribers in both GSM/3G and LTE mainly because these identifiers have static and persistent values. These identifiers can be used to track subscribers’ locations. These studies have suggested that temporary identifiers must be reallocated frequently to solve this privacy problem. The only mechanism to update the temporary identifier in current LTE implementations is called GUTI reallocation. We investigate whether the current implementation of the GUTI reallocation mechanism can provide enough security to protect subscribers’ privacy. To do this, we collect data by performing GUTI reallocation more than 30,000 times with 28 carriers across 11 countries using 78 SIM cards. Then, we investigate whether (1) these reallocated GUTIs in each carrier show noticeable patterns and (2) if they do, these patterns are consistent among different SIM cards within each carrier. Among 28 carriers, 19 carriers have easily predictable and consistent patterns in their GUTI reallocation mechanisms. Among the remaining 9 carriers, we revisit 4 carriers to investigate them in greater detail. For all these 4 carriers, we could find interesting yet predictable patterns after invoking GUTI reallocation multiple times within a short time period. By using this predictability, we show that an adversary can track subscribers’ location as in previous studies. Finally, we present a lightweight and unpredictable GUTI reallocation mechanism as a solution.