On Security Research Towards Future Mobile Network Generations

Abstract

Over the last decades, numerous security and privacy issues in all three active mobile network generations have been revealed that threaten users as well as network providers. In view of the newest generation (5G) currently under development, we now have the unique opportunity to identify research directions for the next generation based on existing security and privacy issues as well as already proposed defenses. This paper aims to unify security knowledge on mobile phone networks into a comprehensive overview and to derive pressing open research questions. To achieve this systematically, we develop a methodology that categorizes known attacks by their aim, proposed defenses, underlying causes, and root causes. Further, we assess the impact and the efficacy of each attack and defense. We then apply this methodology to existing literature on attacks and defenses in all three network generations. By doing so, we identify ten causes and four root causes for attacks.Mapping the attacks to proposed defenses and suggestions for the 5G specification enables us to uncover open research questions and challenges for the development of next-generation mobile networks. The problems of unsecured pre-authentication traffic and jamming attacks exist across all three mobile generations. They should be addressed in the future, in particular to wipe out the class of downgrade attacks and, thereby, strengthen the users' privacy. Further advances are needed in the areas of inter-operator protocols as well as secure baseband implementations. Additionally, mitigations against denial-of-service attacks by smart protocol design represent an open research question.

A Formal Analysis of 5G Authentication

“…5.7.1] The subscription privacy is very important area for Next Generation system as can be seen by the growing attention towards it, both inside and outside the 3GPP world. [...] This important role given to privacy can be explained by numerous, critical attacks that have breached privacy (e.g., with IMSIcatchers [36,37]) in previous generations; see the survey [33]. We also recall that privacy was already a concern in 3G:…”

A Survey on the Security and the Evolution of Osmotic and Catalytic Computing for 5G Networks

“…Furthermore, the research issues and future research challenges are considered in their survey. Rupprecht et al [44] emphasized the main root cause of attacks and their defense in the mobile networks. The authors presented the challenges and research directions for the 5G security.…”

“…The authors analyze the data collection nodes, mechanism and tools. Rupprecht et al [44] 2018 Mobile Network Generations…”

Experimental Analysis of Subscribers’ Privacy Exposure by LTE Paging

“…Long-Term Evolution (LTE) is the fastest developing mobile network technology of all times, commercially launched by more than 670 operators worldwide, and with an estimation of up to 700 until the end of 2018 [14]. In these circumstances, disclosure of private information in LTE brings important consequences, both for 4G as a standalone technology, but also because 4G is a main pillar for the coming 5G [16,32,31]. Although it is significantly improved over the previous generation networks, LTE still exposes vulnerabilities that can easily be exploited by an adversary to break the privacy of subscribers.…”

“…Because paging messages are broadcasted prior to the establishment of a secure communication channel, the identification string they contain is sent in clear. Assuming implicit trust in pre-secured communication is a problem in nowadays mobile networks [16,32]. Hence, to some extent, paging messages can expose private information.…”