Ever troubleshooted an LTE connection that just won’t attach? You see the Authentication Failure (MAC failure) in the trace, but what’s the full story behind it?
I’ve published a comprehensive 27-page, message-by-message deep dive into this exact scenario, analyzing a real-world wrongkey.pcap. This isn’t a high-level overview, it’s a packet-by-packet breakdown of all 14 signaling messages between the UE, eNodeB, MME, and HSS.
In this analysis, we cover:
- S1AP & NAS layers: from the initial S1SetupRequest to the final UEContextReleaseComplete.
- Identity procedures: the security risk of sending the IMSI in cleartext (Message 7).
- The point of failure: why the UE rejects the network’s AUTN (Message 11).
- Post-failure behavior: EMM-DEREGISTERED state and retry timers T3411/T3402.
- A complete reference: full table of LTE attach failure causes with real-life examples.
This is written for network engineers, security analysts, and telecom professionals who want to move beyond theory and see real-world LTE failures explained in detail.
- Read the full article here (PDF):
- Watch the Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BPByqhRcuI
Eng. Alali Khalaf
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