Fuzz testing on eNodeB over the air interface : Using fuzz testing as a means of testing security

Abstract: In modern society, security has become an increasingly important subject, as technologyhas become an integrated part of everyday life. The security of a system can be tested withthe help of fuzzing, where incoming messages to the system are altered. In this thesis, afuzzer was developed targeting an E-UTRAN Node B (eNB) in the Long-Term Evolution(LTE) landscape. The eNB is current prototype and is from the company Ericsson. Thefuzzer is particularly designed for testing the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer of theeNB. The fuzzer uses a genetic method where all of the fuzzer’s flags (the R, F2, E, LCID, Fand L flags) are triggered during the fuzzing period. Depending on the output of the firstgeneration of fuzzed values, new values are generated either by choosing a value close tothe original value, or by choosing a value that belong to the same subgroup as the originalvalue. Four test cases are made, where first test case is the base line of the program and theother three test cases fuzzes the eNB, using different parts of the fuzzer. The results show that depending on which parts of the fuzzer are used, the connectionbecomes different. For test two and three, the connection became increasingly unstable andmore data was present in the connection. Test case four did not however deviate so muchfrom the baseline, if compared to test two and three.