Poster: SIMulator: SIM Tracing on a (Pico-)Budget

Poster: SIMulator: SIM Tracing on a (Pico-)Budget

Abstract

SIM tracing - the ability to inspect, modify, and relay communication between a SIM card and modem - has become a significant technique in cellular network research. It enables essential security- and development-related applications such as fuzzing communication interfaces, extracting session keys, monitoring hidden SIM activity (e.g., proactive SIM commands or over-the-air updates), and facilitating scalable, distributed measurement platforms through SIM reuse. Traditionally, achieving these capabilities has relied on specialized hardware, which can pose financial and logistical burdens for researchers, particularly those new to the field.In this work, we show that full SIM tracing functionality can be achieved using only simple, widely available components, such as UART interfaces and GPIO ports. We port these capabilities to low-cost microcontrollers, exemplified by the Raspberry Pi Pico (4 USD). Unlike other approaches, it dramatically reduces hardware complexity by electrically decoupling the SIM and the modem and only transferring on APDU level.By significantly reducing hardware requirements and associated costs, we aim to make SIM tracing techniques accessible to a broader community of researchers and hobbyists, fostering wider exploration and experimentation in cellular network research.

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Authors
  • Gegenhuber, Gabriel K.
  • Frenzel, Philipp É
  • Dabrowski, Adrian
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Shortfacts
Category
Paper in Conference Proceedings or in Workshop Proceedings (Poster)
Event Title
18th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks
Divisions
Security and Privacy
Subjects
Computersicherheit
Angewandte Informatik
Event Location
Arlington, Virginia, USA
Event Type
Conference
Event Dates
June 30 - July 3, 2025
Series Name
WiSec 2025
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Page Range
288–289
Date
30 June 2025
Official URL
https://doi.org/10.1145/3734477.3736151
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