Analysis of security vulnerabilities in 5G standalone network

Abstract

The first release of the 5G protocol specifications,3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 15 was released in 2017 and the first 5G protocol security specifications was published in 2018. There are various development made in the area of 5G which aims to connect various aspects of human life, no matter Whether it is rural area or urban,5G aims to provide a higher network speed, low latency and ubiquitous connectivity. 5G illustrates the convergence of various use cases of wireless communication and computer networking , which includes the components such as Software Defined Networks (SDN),Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and the edge cloud.Due to the convergence of both technology it leads to various security challenges in SDN/NFV when connected with the 5G network.In future 5G will play a very crucial role in our life,thus network must ensure that all its components and the services which it is providing to the users must be secure. The threat landscape in 5G is huge as with 5G a large number of devices will be connected with the network. The Manuscript discusses about various vulnerability and security threats that exists in 5G networks. A complete end to end 5G standalone test bed is used for analyzing the security threats. Device capabilities ie.core and radio capabilities and pre-authentication signalling message are not security protected in 5G. Security features as compared to legacy network has been improved like the encryption of International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) but still there are known vulner ability that existed in LTE still exist in 5G which need to be investigated before deploying 5G worldwide.