The development of the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks is gaining momentum to connect almost all aspects of life through the network with much higher speed, very low latency and ubiquitous connectivity. Due to its crucial role in our lives, the network must secure its users, components, and services. The security threat landscape of 5G has grown enormously due to the unprecedented increase in types of services and in the number of devices. Therefore, security solutions if not developed yet must be envisioned already to cope with diverse threats on various services, novel technologies, and increased user information accessible by the network. This paper outlines the 5G network threat landscape, the security vulnerabilities in the new technological concepts that will be adopted by 5G, and provides either solutions to those threats or future directions to cope with those security challenges. We also provide a brief outline of the post-5G cellular technologies and their security vulnerabilities which is referred to as future generations (XG) in this paper. In brief, this paper highlights the present and future security challenges in wireless networks, mainly in 5G, and future directions to secure wireless networks beyond 5G.

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Security for 5G and Beyond

With the continuous development of mobile communication technologies, Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has proposed related standards with the fifth generation mobile communication technology (5G), which marks the official start of the evolution from the current Long Term Evolution (LTE) system to the next generation mobile communication system (5GS). This paper makes a large number of contributions to the security aspects of 3GPP 5G networks. Firstly, we present an overview of the network architecture and security functionality of the 3GPP 5G networks. Subsequently, we focus on the new features and techniques including the support of massive Internet of Things (IoT) devices, Device to Device (D2D) communication, Vehicle to Everything (V2X) communication, and network slice, which incur the huge challenges for the security aspects in 3GPP 5G networks. Finally, we discuss in detail the security features, security requirements or security vulnerabilities, existing security solutions and some open research issues about the new features and techniques in 3GPP 5G network.

A Survey on Security Aspects for 3GPP 5G Networks

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has introduced the paradigm of Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) to enable efficient and fast data processing in mobile networks. Among other technological requirements, security and privacy are significant factors in the realization of MEC deployments. In this paper, we analyse the security and privacy of the MEC system. We introduce a thorough investigation of the identification and the analysis of threat vectors in the ETSI standardized MEC architecture. Furthermore, we analyse the vulnerabilities leading to the identified threat vectors and propose potential security solutions to overcome these vulnerabilities. The privacy issues of MEC are also highlighted, and clear objectives for preserving privacy are defined. Finally, we present future directives to enhance the security and privacy of MEC services.

/pdf/survey-on-multi-access-edge-computing-security-and-privacy-5epo4z3o46.pdf

Survey on Multi-Access Edge Computing Security and Privacy

Sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks will have to cope with diverse threats on a space-air-ground integrated network environment, novel technologies, and an accessible user information explosion. However, for now, security and privacy issues for 6G remain largely in concept. This survey provides a systematic overview of security and privacy issues based on prospective technologies for 6G in the physical, connection, and service layers, as well as through lessons learned from the failures of existing security architectures and state-of-the-art defenses. Two key lessons learned are as follows. First, other than inheriting vulnerabilities from the previous generations, 6G has new threat vectors from new radio technologies, such as the exposed location of radio stripes in ultra-massive MIMO systems at Terahertz bands and attacks against pervasive intelligence. Second, physical layer protection, deep network slicing, quantum-safe communications, artificial intelligence (AI) security, platform-agnostic security, real-time adaptive security, and novel data protection mechanisms such as distributed ledgers and differential privacy are the top promising techniques to mitigate the attack magnitude and personal data breaches substantially.

Security and privacy for 6G: A survey on prospective technologies and challenges

With the evolution of the fifth-generation (5G) wireless network, the Internet of Things (IoT) has become a revolutionary technique that enables a diverse number of features and applications. It can able a diverse amount of devices to be connected in order to create a single communication architecture. As it has significantly expanded in recent years, it is fundamental to study this trending technology in detail and take a close look at its applications in the different domains. It represents an enabler of new communication possibilities between people and things. The main asset of this concept is its significant influence through the creation of a new world dimension. The key features required for employing a large-scale IoT are low-cost sensors, high-speed and error-tolerant data communications, smart computations, and numerous applications. This research work is presented in four main sections, including a general overview of IoT technology, a summary of previous correlated surveys, a review regarding the main IoT applications, and a section on the challenges of IoT. The purpose of this study is to fully cover the applications of IoT, including healthcare, environmental, commercial, industrial, smart cities, and infrastructural applications. This work explains the concept of IoT and defines and summarizes its main technologies and uses, offering a next-generation protocol as a solution to the challenges. IoT challenges were investigated to enhance research and development in the fields. The contribution and weaknesses of each research work cited are covered, highlighting eventual possible research questions and open matters for IoT applications to ensure a full analysis coverage of the discussed papers.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/12/10/1674/pdf

Internet of Things and Its Applications: A Comprehensive Survey

The emergence of narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) has brought hope for the popularization and application of mobile Internet standards. Nowadays, NB-IoT technology has been introduced into the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards, where low-overhead, low-data-transmission IoT devices can securely access the fifth generation (5G) core network through the 3GPP access network. However, according to the current 3GPP standard, these NB-IoT devices still employ the traditional authentication process of normal user equipment to implement mutual authentication between NB-IoT devices and 5G core networks, which brings a lot of communication and storage overhead, and it will be more serious when lots of NB-IoT devices are activated simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a fast mutual authentication and data transfer scheme for massive NB-IoT devices, which integrates the access authentication and secure data transmission process and achieves the authentications and data transmissions of a group of NB-IoT devices at the same time. Our scheme can not only greatly simplify the authentication process and alleviate the load of the networks but also ensure robust security protection including user anonymity and nonrepudiation. The performance analysis results show that the proposed scheme can withstand a variety of security attacks with ideal efficiency.

Fast Authentication and Data Transfer Scheme for Massive NB-IoT Devices in 3GPP 5G Network

The narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) system has become an integral part of the future fifth generation (5G) network. Although the NB-IoT system has gradually been improved in the traditional LTE network currently, the NB-IoT system does not have an effective access authentication scheme in the future 5G network. According to the current 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard, NB-IoT devices still use the traditional access authentication method to perform mutual authentication with the network, which may bring a large amount of signaling and communication overhead. This problem will be magnified in a large-scale device environment in the future 5G network. In this article, a quantum resistance access authentication and data distribution scheme is proposed for large-scale NB-IoT devices. The scheme can simultaneously implement access authentication and data transmission of a group of NB-IoT devices based on the lattice-based homomorphic encryption technology. Our scheme not only greatly reduce the network burden but also achieve strong security, including privacy protection and anti-quantum attacks. The performance analysis results show that our scheme has the ideal efficiency.

Anti-Quantum Fast Authentication and Data Transmission Scheme for Massive Devices in 5G NB-IoT System

The Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) system has become an important branch of the Internet of Everything and is an indispensable part in future fifth Generation (5G) network. However, there is currently no effective access authentication scheme for the NB-IoT system in the future 5G network. According to the current 3GPP standard, NB-IoT devices still use the traditional access authentication method to perform the mutual authentication with the network, which may bring a lot of signaling and communication overheads. This problem will be more prominent when sea of NB-IoT devices simultaneously are activated in the 5G network. In this paper, we propose a quantum-resistance access authentication and data distribution scheme for massive NB-IoT devices. This scheme can implement access authentication and data transmission for a group of NB-IoT devices at the same time based on the lattice-based homomorphic encryption technology. Our scheme can not only greatly reduce the network burden, but also can achieve the strong security including privacy protection and resisting quantum attacks. Performance analysis results show that our solution has the desired efficiency.

Pu Yu

Papers

A Survey on Security Aspects for 3GPP 5G Networks

Fast Authentication and Data Transfer Scheme for Massive NB-IoT Devices in 3GPP 5G Network

Anti-Quantum Fast Authentication and Data Transmission Scheme for Massive Devices in 5G NB-IoT System

Quantum-Resistance Authentication and Data Transmission Scheme for NB-IoT in 3GPP 5G Networks