Vodafone IP Licensing Limited

Vodafone Holding Gmbh

Simon Sporton

Oliver Sauder

Ratnanandan Ganeshanandan

Lars Nestler

Timothy Sutherns

A received network signalling messages in a Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) comprises a routeing part and an instruction part, each of the routeing part and the instruction part comprising a respective message address. These are handled by: authenticating the received network signalling message on the basis of the message address of the routeing part and the message address of the instruction part; and processing the received network signalling message based on the authentication.

Network signalling message verification

Undesirable signalling traffic received at a telecommunications network is detected by establishing at least one statistical parameter in respect of signalling traffic received at the telecommunications network from at least one specific source and evaluating the established at least one statistical parameter against one or more predetermined statistical profiles.

Detecting undesirable signalling traffic

Signalling messages may be monitored in a telecommunications network by receiving an indication of a signalling message for a network entity of the telecommunications network, the signalling message comprising a signalling dialog identifier. The signalling dialog identifier of the received signalling message is compared with a list of known signalling dialog identifiers relating to the network entity and the signalling message is categorized based on a result of the step of comparing, for example as suspicious. If a number of signalling messages for a network entity of the telecommunications network categorized as suspicious and having a common additional characteristic is at least a threshold value, an alert may be generated.

Monitoring of signalling traffic

The invention is related to security method for the verification of an Information Retrieval Request () which requests a transmission of data () from a Location Register Server (LR) to a Sending Entity () in a Mobile Communication Network (), comprising the following steps: receive an Information Retrieval Request () from the Sending Entity (); extract at least one Specification Code () for specifying the Sending Entity () and/or a Mobile Subscriber (MS) out of the Information Retrieval Request (); compare the extracted at least one Specification Code () to a Verification List (); based on the result of the comparison with the Verification List (), allow or prohibit the transmission of data () requested in the Information Retrieval Request ().

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Berkshire, United Kingdom

Simon Sporton