Towards 5G-ready Security Evaluation

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Entering the era of the fifth generation (5G), telecom networks demonstrate certain characteristics less seen in the predecessors, complicating the security posture of the hosting IT infrastructure. For example, there are more parties sharing the platform, e.g., virtual operators, and network entities can appear/disappear dynamically on the fly. While there have been various well-established solutions to the detection, mitigation, prevention and analysis of cyber-attacks, evaluation of their probability has been a long quest in the IT industry. This concerns important decisions such as where more investments should go and how network functions should be deployed. Even though accurate prediction of such attack is non-trivial (if possible at all), we aim to at least come up with a basis for comparison. With such bases, a decision maker can see that system/infrastructure A is more secure than B, under the assumption of X. In this project, we take into account the 5G-specific characteristics and remodel various factors like attacks and defense mechanisms under the context of security evaluation. For instance, we use a layered model to represent 5G entities and propose a modular approach to aggregate security metrics of individual parties to have an overall score. Moreover, we will identify new measures to assist in security evaluation. Three tentative aspects are 1) Metadata of 5G network entities. Most 5G entities are based on virtualized/cloud-based network functions that can be automatically instantiated. The metadata that defines them has security implications.2) Machine learning. Without manually selecting security indicators, we can use methods like neural networks to self-adapt to indicate security levels, based on current expert knowledge. 3) User-based validation. As security evaluation always concerns the future (e.g., the probability), it is not easy or less straightforward to prove or falsify with algorithms. We also plan to also involve user opinions to facilitate the validation.As another differentiator, we base our experimentation and evaluation on real virtualized 5G testbed.