3GPP Work Item description

This page contains informal descriptive text only.  See master WID page for further details.

Feature: Selective Disabling of UE Capabilities

Presently the virus threat to the IT organizations and consumers worldwide are well known. Significant damage has been caused and particularly so with rather simple but potent methods. With increasing data usage and the drive towards increasing the ARPU per subscriber from increased data usage, the need for effective methods of dealing with the consequences of downloading and activating a virus in a mobile telephone needs to be addressed.  

Similar problems may also arise with downloaded applications that are not functioning correctly.

Objective: 

In particular a downloaded and activated application that repeatedly makes a connection request requiring both allocation of radio resources and network signalling processing can be a substantial threat. The misbehaving application may be downloaded by the user through various means: e-mail, SMS and Push services, and (exceptionally) fail to be detected and disabled by application layer preventative measures. While operators may be able to maintain some degree of control this poses a significant threat to the industry at large. Similar problems may also arise with viruses.

What is needed is therefore:

    §         A means of disabling an infected device from registering again on the network, both in the current network and any other network, i.e. effectively quarantining the device.

    §         A means of maintaining the disabled status of the device, even if the mobile has been successively switched off and on.  

The criteria for determining when an application is misbehaving are not included in the scope of this work item.

Service Aspects:

Selective disabling of the mobile device should be provided to allow the establishment of connection types which are not impacted by a virus or application error, e.g., if the misbehaving application impacts only the PS domain, then it should be possible to allow CS domain connections such as Emergency calls or vice-versa.