UE Security Reloaded: Developing a 5G Standalone User-Side Security Testing Framework

Evangelos Bitsikas; Syed Khandker; Ahmad Salous; Aanjhan Ranganathan; Roger Piqueras Jover; Christina Pöpper

doi:10.1145/3558482.3590194

UE Security Reloaded: Developing a 5G Standalone User-Side Security Testing Framework

Evangelos Bitsikas, Syed Khandker, Ahmad Salous, Aanjhan Ranganathan, Roger Piqueras Jover, Christina Pöpper

Computer Science

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

Security flaws and vulnerabilities in cellular networks lead to severe security threats given the data-plane services that are involved, from calls to messaging and Internet access. While the 5G Standalone (SA) system is currently being deployed worldwide, practical security testing of User Equipment (UE) has only been conducted and reported publicly for 4G/LTE and earlier network generations. In this paper, we develop and present the first open-source based security testing framework for 5G SA User Equipment. To that end, we modify the functionality of open-source suites (Open5GS and srsRAN) and develop a broad set of test cases for the 5G NAS and RRC layers. We apply our testing framework in a proof-of-concept manner to 5G SA mobile phones and provide detailed insights from our experiments. While being a framework in development, the results of our experiments presented in this paper can assist other researchers in the field and have the potential to improve 5G SA security.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages	121-132
Number of pages	12
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450398596
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3558482.3590194
State	Published - May 29 2023
Event	16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, WiSec 2023 - Guildford, United Kingdom Duration: May 29 2023 → Jun 1 2023

Publication series

Name	WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks

Conference

Conference	16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, WiSec 2023
Country/Territory	United Kingdom
City	Guildford
Period	5/29/23 → 6/1/23

Keywords

5g
open5gs
security testing
srsran
user equipment

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Computer Science Applications
Information Systems
Software
Safety Research
Computer Networks and Communications

Access to Document

10.1145/3558482.3590194

Cite this

Bitsikas, E., Khandker, S., Salous, A., Ranganathan, A., Piqueras Jover, R., & Pöpper, C. (2023). UE Security Reloaded: Developing a 5G Standalone User-Side Security Testing Framework. In WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (pp. 121-132). (WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks). Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1145/3558482.3590194

UE Security Reloaded: Developing a 5G Standalone User-Side Security Testing Framework. / Bitsikas, Evangelos; Khandker, Syed; Salous, Ahmad et al.
WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2023. p. 121-132 (WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Bitsikas, E, Khandker, S, Salous, A, Ranganathan, A, Piqueras Jover, R & Pöpper, C 2023, UE Security Reloaded: Developing a 5G Standalone User-Side Security Testing Framework. in WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks. WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, pp. 121-132, 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, WiSec 2023, Guildford, United Kingdom, 5/29/23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3558482.3590194

Bitsikas E, Khandker S, Salous A, Ranganathan A, Piqueras Jover R, Pöpper C. UE Security Reloaded: Developing a 5G Standalone User-Side Security Testing Framework. In WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. 2023. p. 121-132. (WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks). doi: 10.1145/3558482.3590194

Bitsikas, Evangelos ; Khandker, Syed ; Salous, Ahmad et al. / UE Security Reloaded : Developing a 5G Standalone User-Side Security Testing Framework. WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2023. pp. 121-132 (WiSec 2023 - Proceedings of the 16th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks).

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UE Security Reloaded: Developing a 5G Standalone User-Side Security Testing Framework

Abstract

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Conference

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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