Femtocell

A femtocell is a small, low-power cellular base station designed for indoor use in homes and small offices, backhauled over the subscriber's broadband connection to the operator core. Femtocells improve indoor coverage but expand the operator's trust boundary into customer premises and have been the subject of security research demonstrating IMSI capture and traffic interception.

Categories: Radio Access NetworkCore NetworkSignaling

Femtocell in context

The radio access network is where mobile devices attach to the operator's infrastructure. Attacks in this layer include IMSI catching, rogue base stations and downgrade attacks; defenses rest on mutual authentication, integrity-protected signaling and Open RAN supply-chain hygiene.

The mobile core carries subscriber sessions, mobility and policy. In 4G it is the EPC (MME, HSS, S/PGW); in 5G it is the Service-Based Architecture with AMF, SMF, UPF, AUSF, UDM and the NRF.

To place Femtocell in the wider telecom-security picture, review Base Station (BS), SRVCC, N3, AMF, Fuzzing and IAP: each entry cross-references back to this page so you can walk the topic in either direction.

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