2018 IEEE Global Conference on Wireless Computing and Networking (GCWCN)

Security Threats and Challenges in

Future Mobile Wireless Networks
Shailesh Pramod Bendale Jayashree Rajesh Prasad
Computer Engineering Computer Engineering
NBN Sinhgad School of Engineering, Sinhgad College of Engineering,
Pune, India Pune, India
shailesh.bendale@sinhgad.edu jrprasad.scoe@sinhgad.edu

Abstract— With the introduction of 5G Mobile Wireless Heterogeneous Network (HetNet), mMIMO, millimeter
Networks there are many issues regarding security. The wave (mmwave) [8], D2D communication [7], M2M
comprehensive study of new 5G Mobile Wireless Network in Communication. General architecture of 5G Wireless
contrast with conventional cellular network (4G) is to be done. Systems is depicted in Fig. 1 [2]. 5G will not only provide
It begins with the particularities of 5G network and new conventional data and voice services. But there are some use
requirements as well as motivation of 5G Mobile Security. The
threats and security concerns are to be studied. The recent
cases for vehicle to vehicle communication, health
developments in existing scheme of 5G Mobile Network based applications, smart cities, industry atomization and so on.
on security services like Authentication of Devices, Availability These new technologies, new architecture, new applications
of network in a specified area, Confidentiality of Data, Privacy bring in the new security issues and need to resolve them.
and intrusion detection is to be summarized. 5G Mobile
Wireless Network has new security features because of many
new different technologies used in 5G such as Internet of
Things(IoT), massive multiple-input multiple- output
(mMIMO), device-to-device communications(D2D) and
software defined networks(SDN). Based on these security
development and research new 5G Mobile Wireless Securities
is explained. New Intrusion detection techniques also required
to be developed for the future mobile wireless network. Future
directions and scope in security management in 5G is then
summarized.

Keywords— Security in 5G, 5G Mobile Wireless Networks,

Intrusion detection System (IDS).

I. INTRODUCTION

The new generation of Mobile-Telecommunication System

Fig. 1. General Architecture of 5G Wireless System
is 5th Generation Wireless System (5G). It’s not just a next
version or advancement of current 4G Systems; it is much
There is requirement for the new intrusion detection
more beyond that. It will unlock new service capabilities
techniques for future mobile wireless network. Since the 5G
and implementation challenges for world. The utilization of
will consist of heterogeneous network [11]. The current
all the cellular networks till 2020 is going to be more than
50 billion; tremendous amount of increase in data traffic mechanisms will not be helpful to provide the security.
will be seen as compared to the current scenario [1]. Present
Present Wireless Communication has limited bandwidth and
cellular network (4G) will not be capable of or sufficient to
Broadcast nature of transmission, due to this it is possible but
handle these requirements, so there is a need of 5G Mobile
hard to provide security to the users. The current Wireless
Telecommunication. The major focus of the researchers will
Communication (4G) provides security based upon traditional
be focus on more capacity than 4G, dense network devices
security methodologies as user identity management and two-
as well as new services like Device to Device
way authentications in the User Equipment (UE) and Base
Communication (D2D)[7], massive Multiple Input Multiple
Station, securing communication channel, etc. The new
Output (mMIMO) and many more. More specifically, 5G
technologies have many requirements such as very less amount
advanced features aims at 1-10Gbps connections, 10-100x
of latency, reduced consumption of power in the
connected devices, almost 100% availability, 90% reduced
communication. These technologies not only need better
network power consumption and increased battery life up to
service capabilities but also are vulnerable to security attacks.
10 years for lower power consumption devices. To achieve
For e.g. In IoT many devices will not have
these goals other technologies are used in 5G are

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 2018 IEEE Global Conference on Wireless Computing and Networking (GCWCN)

large computational power hence they can’t work on same

protocols as we are using for high end devices and hence
they will be vulnerable to threats.

Security attacks are divided mainly into two categories

Passive and Active Attacks [9]. Passive attacks are generally
made to make unauthorized use of information of the
authorized users and are not intended to interrupt the
communication. Most famous passive attacks are
Eavesdropping and Traffic Analysis. These attacks violets
the privacy of users and Data Confidentiality. On the other
hand, Active attacks are intended to interrupt the
communication of legitimate users or to alter the
communication. Active attack includes Distributed Denial (b) Jamming
0f Service (DDoS) Attack, Denial of Service (DoS) Attack
and Man in The Middle (MITM) Attack. To deal with these
attacks many approaches are being used. These approaches
can be categorized into two types, Cryptographic
Approaches and Physical Layer Security (PLS) Approaches.
Out of these two, Cryptographic approaches are
conventionally being used at different layers of 5G Wireless
network. Cryptographic approaches are considered into two
types, Asymmetric Key Cryptography and Symmetric Key
Cryptography. Symmetric Key Cryptography is referred to
method of sharing a private key between each pair of
communication parties for encryption and decryption. In
Asymmetric Key Cryptography, a private key is used to
(c) DoS and DDoS
decrypt the data and a public is used to encrypt the data. As
the name suggests public key is shared among the all parties
of network and each user will have his own private key. The
performance of the Cryptographic approaches totally
depends upon length of the key and complexity of
algorithm. But due to the low latency and reduced power
consumption requirements of 5G it will encounter problems
in Cryptographic approaches. PLS can play interesting role
here, it is proved that even if legitimate user uses worse
channel than eavesdropper, it is possible to generate secrete
key. There is lot of research done in 5G wireless network.
Comparing these two strategies PLS will have lower
computational complexity with larger scalability therefore
PLS is ideal technique for 5G Wireless Networks. (d) MITM
II. ATTACKS IN 5G NETWORK
Fig. 2. Attacks in 5G Network

Fig. 2 represents the attacks, each one of them is

individually elaborated in the two aspects, the attack, and
security approach [2].
A. Eavesdropping and Traffic Analysis: It’s Passive attack
as the network and communication is not interrupted. In this
attack, attacker intercepts the communication of two
legitimate users without their knowledge. Since it is passive
in nature this attack remains unnoticed. Encryption
technique is used to prevent these types of attacks; if a
message is encrypted eavesdropper can’t intercept it easily.
Traffic analysis attack is used to intercept data of location,
(a) Eavesdropping identity of the communicating parties and pattern of

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 2018 IEEE Global Conference on Wireless Computing and Networking (GCWCN)
communication. Even if message is encrypted, traffic
analyzer can still read the pattern of communication. This
attack also doesn’t affect communication or network. These
kind of attack violet Data Confidentiality and User Privacy.
The strength of encryption algorithm plays the most
important part to prevent these kinds of attacks, and if Eaves
dropper uses higher computational capacity devices than the
communication parties it will be easy to decrypt the
message. Present, solution for eavesdropping assumes
eavesdropper will have lower computational power and less
data analysis capabilities. Moreover, some technologies
such as IoT and HetNet this may difficulty to tackle
eavesdropping which will lead to more complex scenarios.
Rather than Cryptography PLS techniques are paid more
attention in 5G to deal with these problems [9].
B. Jamming: Unlike previously discussed problem Jamming
can completely stop the communication between legitimate
users. Jamming prevents legitimate users from
communication and accessing radio resources. This is an
Active type of attack and in active attacks solution is
detection oriented. A resource allocation strategy can be
used to prevent these types of attacks to provide better error
rate performance and increase detection speed. As shown in
figure, malicious node interrupts the communication
between two authorized parties [9].
C. DoS and DDoS: DoS are the most famous kind of attacks
used to take down the whole network. DoS or DDoS attacks
can completely exhaust network resources, by sending
malicious request. It is also an Active type of attack which
impacts availability of the network. DoS can be done from
more than one node which creates more adversaries for
network it is called as DDoS. In 5G Wireless Network with
higher density of devices DoS can attack various layers of
the Network and can become serious threat to the system. A
DoS attack can use to attack nodes which can target on
Battery, Memory, Sensors, Radio or CPU [9].
D. MITM: In MITM, the control of the channel between
users is taken by attacker. The attacker will replace, modify,
or totally changes the message to be passed between two
parties. Fig.2 shows MITM attack models. It is also active
attack which compromises Data Confidentiality, Integrity,
and availability [9].
III. SECURITY SERVICES
New technology, new scenarios, new features in 5G
wireless networks other possibilities and security concerns.
Here, we discuss five aspects of security services:
authentication, confidentiality, availability, integrity and
intrusion detection.
A. Authentication: Authentication can be categorized into
two types, Entity Authentication and Message
Authentication [2]. These kinds of authentications are
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important to avoid previously mentioned attacks and
preserve user Privacy and Data Confidentiality. In 4G LTE,
authentication between devices and Base station is done
before the communication. The authentication present
cellular networks are done using symmetric key approach.
Whereas in 5G, is not only limited to UE and Base Station
but also between third party user.
B. Confidentiality: Data confidentiality and Privacy are the
two types of confidentiality [2]. Data confidentiality helps to
fight against Passive Attacks. Privacy stops unauthorized
users from analyzing or influencing data. The traffic
patterns are used to analyze information such as location or
any sensitive information. This becomes a very sensitive in
5G where there will be much more personal data such as
health applications, vehicle data etc.
Cryptographic approaches are most popularly used to
restrict the access from unauthorized users from any
information to secure data confidentiality. Sender and
receiver use Private Key encryption to encrypt and decrypt
data it is also called as symmetric key encryption. In this
cryptography both should share the private key. For sharing
the key, secure key distribution method is used. Previous
methods assume that attacker has less computing
capabilities and hardware. So those techniques don’t work
on attackers with high computing power. PLS can provide
better option in these situations to fight with Jamming and
Eavesdropping attack.
C. Availability: Availability is checking how a service is
accessible and usable to a user from anywhere and anytime
[2]. It is also a degree to which a service is robust against
any type of attack. DoS and DDoS are the attacks which
violets the availability of network. Jamming can also
prevent communication between legitimate users by
interrupting communication links between them. With the
increasing use of IoT nodes it will be very difficult to fight
against Jamming and DoS kind of Attacks to maintain
availability of 5G wireless Network. Resource allocation
can become effective method to fight against these
problems.
D. Integrity: There is no mechanism to avoid duplication or
modification of message even if Message Authentication
provides confirmation of source of the message. 100%
availability is the aim of 5G Wireless Networks to support
the applications close to human life such as health
monitoring, vehicle monitoring, etc. The important aspect of
Security in 5G is Integrity of data. Integrity restricts
message from being edited or copied by any attacker [2].
E. Intrusion Detection: All the above mechanisms are used
for prevention, but in today’s world security is of too much
concern [11]. If some attacker is successful in bypassing the
prevention mechanism like authentication, etc. This
scenarios is also equally important which need to be taken
into consideration.
 2018 IEEE Global Conference on Wireless Computing and Networking (GCWCN)
IV. TECHNOLOGIES USED IN 5G
In this section, we present the different technologies which
can be applied to 5G Wireless Networks. We will take a
brief look at new possibilities and use cases in these new
technologies.
A. HetNet: The best service to provide high coverage in 5G
is HetNet. HetNet has many heterogeneous characteristics
and also provides high capacity, better coverage and best
performance in terms of Energy Efficiency (EE) and
Spectrum Efficiency (SE). Despite these capabilities,
HetNet is more vulnerable in terms of User Equipment to
Eavesdropping compared to single tier legacy Network. The
HetNet consists of high density of small cells, and with
continues handover of small cells, handover will suffer from
performance issues. [2]
B.D2D: D2D communication means Device can
communicate with another Device without going through
the Base Station. D2D communication allows the efficient
use of spectrum. Also, it helps in reducing load from Base
Station. Dynamic Spectrum access is usually adopted to
improve spectrum efficiency, but this leads to vulnerability
such as Jamming attack. Resource allocation via
cooperation between nodes of D2D is a most used way to
provide security to D2D communication. Besides
cooperation, channel access and power control can also be
used for securing D2D Communication [7].
C. Massive MIMO: We can achieve high Energy Efficiency
and Spectrum Efficiency for network by using large number
of antennas. By using large number of antennas, we can
achieve huge high throughput. Additionally, it can increase
the security of network, but these large antennas will cause
serious interference to each other which will result into
inconsistent performance. This brings us to another
technology called Beam forming. However, Eavesdropping
attack can become a major threat in massive MIMO
systems. To fight against this PLS can play a significant role
in 5G [8].
D.IoT: IoT nodes are generally low powered devices with
less computation capabilities. It becomes hard to maintain
security for such nodes with many constraints in terms of
power and computational capabilities. It requires
lightweight and efficient mechanism for security. Relaying
is popularly use to tackle these issues as an effective method
[10]. RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification,
which is widely used in IoT. RFID can be used in many
applications of day to day life like inventory management,
traffic flow automation etc. IoT is considered as most
promising technology, which is developing rapidly and will
require better network.
E. Intrusion detection techniques: There are generally two
mechanisms used for providing the security in wired
network. Firstly firewall which is applied at the gateways,
switches or routers and secondly Intrusion Detection System
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which comes into picture when some malicious data comes
into the network bypassing the firewall. But if we consider
the case of future mobile wireless networks each node will
require the security mechanism. Each end user needs to be
equipped with intrusion detection mechanism due to
heterogeneous networks. So if the above prevention
technique like authentication is misused then security is
essential. New or Existing IDS techniques or frameworks
will be required [11].
V. OBSERVATION AND EXISTING WORK
There is a lot of work going on in 5G but standardization
process is at very early stage and there is a lot of scope for
new research in 5G, especially in security aspect. Being
very new and emerging technology there are several future
directions. Following table is for giving a rough idea about
what can be done in order to make communication in 5G
reliable and secure than ever before. In this paper, we have
elaborated very few methods; many new methods are
coming in market. Lot of work is needed to be done to
provide the security, especially in the field of intrusion
detection techniques.
TABLE I DIFFERENT SERVICES AND APPROACHES IN 5G
Services Approaches
Authentication SDN Enabled Entity Authentication, CRC based
message authentication[3]
Availability Pseudo Random Time Hopping [4], Fusion Center
based detection for low power Devices.[5]
Confidentiality Power Control, Artificial Noise with mmWave [6]
Intrusion New framework for Mobile cloud based Solution in
detection 5G network [11].
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
The new network 5G which we have studied, is enabling
many new applications and provide improvement to the
previous networking technology. This research introduced a
brief knowledge about recent study in 5G Wireless
Networks. Talking about security we have touched many
facets of it such as, Availability, Authentication, Data
Confidentiality, and Integrity. Many new security use cases
are considered due to applications such as HetNet, IoT,
mMIMO, D2D and intrusion detection techniques. This
many new possibilities and advancement of technology will
lead to new security requirements and there is lot more work
is needed to be done in this area.
Due to the heterogeneous nature of 5G mobile wireless
network many new technologies are getting introduced in
industry. Many new technology use cases will also need to
be studied in detail. This will bring in new challenges for
Network slicing, Software Defined Network(SDN),
Network Function Virtualization(NFV), mobile cloud
computing, mobile ad-hoc networks for intrusion detection
in future mobile wireless network. Lot of work is carried out
for providing intrusion prevention, but intrusion detection
and overcoming it will be also major task considering the
heterogeneous nature of 5G.We expect this thesis will help
 2018 IEEE Global Conference on Wireless Computing and Networking (GCWCN)

you in understanding the terminologies in 5G and will

provide you direction for further studies.

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