Researchers have released 5GDescrambler, a tool designed to locate, descramble, and decode scheduling information in 5G New Radio (NR) networks. The work builds on recent demonstrations that tracking users in 5G NR is possible by exploiting various side-channels.
According to the paper's abstract, the side-channel approach allows for identification of individuals, real-time classification of user activity, and tracking of users. The tool appears to target the scheduling information that 5G base stations use to allocate resources, which can leak identifying details.
The abstract is brief, and the full methodology and evaluation are not summarized in the available text. The paper is available on arXiv as a long version (arXiv:2609.07367v2), but specific technical details, performance metrics, and countermeasures are not described in the abstract.