The risks of 5G security

The advent of open radio access networks, or Open RAN, which adds a huge software ecosystem to the radios, cell towers and base stations converting wireless signals to data, 5G is a ginormous data onramp to the network of networks we call the internet. The latest generation of wireless promises to deliver, to filch from a Hollywood box-office title, “Everything Everywhere All At Once.”

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5G security, operating outside the walled garden of dedicated equipment, servers and protocols that characterized 4G LTE, involves a software ecosystem as part of the “virtualization” of RAN and implicates containers, microservices and other cloud-forward services as a new core network.

As former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wrote in a recently released Brookings report on securing 5G systems, the 5G standard brings with it two synergistic cybersecurity challenges:

• The 5G standard “virtualization” means network functions that used to be performed by proprietary or single-vendor hardware are now being performed by software, and software is hackable — ergo, network infrastructure built on software code is vulnerable.
• Network operators are supplementing or replacing traditional infrastructure vendors and closed proprietary systems with an expanded set of vendors bearing O RAN protocols. Wheeler wrote that this diversity of suppliers could become a per se invitation to a new diversity of unaddressed attack vectors

The open, flexible and programmable nature of 5G networks, he noted, make for a highly susceptible framework

Among other things, 5G constitutes networks linked, often weakly, because each network and device within it may have different security protocols and technology. Partly because of this, the demand for 5G security products is powering up a booming security vendor ecosystem for things like next-generation firewalls and DDoS attack defense and security gateways.

“Low-cost, high-speed and generally unmonitored networking devices provide threat actors a reliable and robust infrastructure for launching attacks or running command and control infrastructure that will take longer to detect and evict,” he said.

McGladrey also pointed out that as organizations deploy 5G as a replacement for Wi-Fi, they may not correctly configure or manage the optional but recommended security controls.

“While telecommunications providers will have adequate budget and staffing to ensure the security of their networks, private 5G networks may not and thus become an ideal target for a threat actor,” he said.