Ammar El Falou
Research Scientist
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Ammar El Falou received his M.E. in Communication and Computer Engineering from the Lebanese University, Lebanon, in 2009, and his M.Sc. degree in Digital Telecommunication Systems from TELECOM Paris, France. In 2013, he received his Ph.D. in communication and information science from IMT Atlantique, France. In 2014, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Orange Labs, Sophia Antipolis, France. From 2015 to 2020, he was an assistant professor at Lebanese University (LU), Lebanese International University (LIU), and ESIEE Paris, France. He is currently a Research Scientist at KAUST, focusing on network security and wireless communication systems.
Speaker sessions
Briefings and Arsenals | Confirmed Speakers | No Session Assigned
Placeholder session for confirmed speakers without an assigned session, allowing them to be pushed to Swapcard and Visit.
- 07:30
- Tue
- 01 Dec
Stage:
Briefing Stage 2
Sessions Type:
Keynote
Breaking 5G Before Authentication: Radio Resource ControlStorm Attacks and Attestation-Backed Cross-Layer Defense
- 14:40
- Tue
- 01 Dec
Stage:
Briefing Stage 1
Sessions Type:
Keynote
From Spoofing to Trust: Emergency Alerts Spoofing Testbed and Cross-Cell Verification
Public warning systems (PWS) in cellular networks enable authorities to broadcast emergency alerts to all mobile phones in a geographic region in the event of threats such as earthquakes or severe weather. If an attacker can imitate these alerts and transmit a forged warning containing fake news or phishing links, the impact could range from public panic to user compromise. In this work, we present the first open-source 5G emergency alert spoofing attack, implemented by modifying the openairinterface (OAI) radio access network (RAN) code and executed using a software-defined radio, complemented by a custom network management system to automate network and warning configuration. We conduct a detailed analysis of how different smartphones behave under various conditions. Our findings show that while devices readily display spoofed alerts, the alerting mechanism enables multiple practical attack scenarios beyond simple warning display. Finally, to address this threat, we propose and implement a lightweight cross-cell verification mechanism in OAI, in which the device compares the received warning with neighboring cell broadcasts to flag single-source alerts as suspicious.
- 12:30
- Wed
- 02 Dec
Stage:
Briefing Stage 1
Sessions Type:
Keynote