SIMBox bypass frauds in cellular networks: Strategies, evolution, detection, and future directions

Due to their complexity and opaqueness, cellular networks have been subject to numerous attacks over the past few decades. These attacks are a real problem to telecom operators and cost them about USD 28.3 Billion annually, as reported by the Communications Fraud Control Association. SIMBox fraud is one of the most prevalent of these telephone frauds. It consists of diverting international calls on the VoIP network and terminating them as local calls using an off-the-shelf device, referred to as SIMBox. This paper surveys both the existing literature and the major SIMBox manufacturers to provide comprehensive and analytical knowledge on SIMBox fraud, fraud strategies, fraud evolution, and fraud detection methods. We provide the necessary background on the telephone ecosystem while extensively exploring the SIMBox architecture required to understand fraud strategies. Our goal is to provide a complete introductory guide for research on SIMBox fraud and stimulate interest for SIMBox fraud detection, which remains little investigated. In this vein, we conclude the paper by presenting insights into tomorrow’s SIMBox fraud detection challenges and research directions.