SBIR-STTR Award

Currently all callerID displays on all cell phones are totally unauthenticated. This means that with the right software or hardware voice spammers can impersonate any corporation, individual or location. Ultimately the solution to this problem is to update the 3GPP standards and require this field to be validated and authenticated. Until that time NAND Technologies proposes to use a combination of techniques already being successfully applied to spam in other areas. The unique adaptions to voice form the basis of this proposal and can serve as an effective stop gap measure until the root cause of the problem is resolved. These methods and the linked applications can also serve as a case study for the needed standards updates.

In an emergency or other special situation, government agencies can send messages to mobile phones in affected areas using Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). The messages might convey life-saving information where it is needed, but vulnerabilities in the underlying mobile networks could allow bad actors to use WEA to send their own messages for harmful purposes. NAND Technologies will research and develop new methods to authenticate WEA messages and give mobile phone users the confidence that the emergency alerts they receive are legitimate, and to give U.S. Government agencies the ability to provide more information than the current system allows.