Spoofing Attacks on 5G PRS-Based Positioning

The advancement of 5G has significantly improved positioning accuracy, enabling a wide range of applications. This paper investigates potential vulnerabilities in 5 G positioning reference signal (PRS)-based systems, focusing on spoofing attacks. We outline three attack strategies that exploit the manipulation of signal propagation times from reference and/or auxiliary base stations (BSs) to compromise positioning. A key aspect of our analysis is identifying the conditions under which these attacks can be carried out without disrupting communication between the reference BS and the victim user equipment (UE). We further present results demonstrating the impact of these attacks on positioning accuracy and clock offset estimation.