Security of 5G-V2X: Technologies, Standardization and Research Directions

Cellular-Vehicle to Everything (C-V2X) aims at resolving issues pertaining to the traditional usability of Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) and Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) networking. Specifically, C-V2X lowers the number of entities involved in vehicular communications and allows the inclusion of cellular-security solutions to be applied to V2X. For this, the evolvement of LTE-V2X is revolutionary, but it fails to handle the demands of high throughput, ultra-high reliability, and ultra-low latency alongside its security mechanisms. To counter this, 5G-V2X is considered as an integral solution, which not only resolves the issues related to LTE-V2X but also provides a function-based network setup. Several reports have been given for the security of 5G, but none of them primarily focuses on the security of 5G-V2X. This article provides a detailed overview of 5G-V2X with a security-based comparison to LTE-V2X. A novel Security Reflex Function (SRF)-based architecture is proposed and several research challenges are presented related to the security of 5G-V2X. Furthermore, the article lays out requirements of Ultra-Dense and Ultra-Secure (UD-US) transmissions necessary for 5G-V2X.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, Preprin

Impacts of S1 and X2 Interfaces on eMBMS Handover Failure: Solution and Performance Analysis

In evolved Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (eMBMS), service continuity enables users move from one cell to another without interrupting eMBMS service. Unlike traditional handover in unicast transmission, a UE can receive eMBMS service in either unicast or multicast mode. In this paper, we point out a new handover failure problem in eMBMS due to the miss of rekeying information. We first take a close look at the new handover scenarios. We then investigate the problem by using comprehensive mathematical models. Our models provide insights on the new handover problem and introduce theoretical guidelines for mobile operators to design and optimize their networks without wide deployment to save cost and time. Moreover, we propose a solution to combat against the handover failure. Both the simulation and analytical results demonstrate that the impacts of the eMBMS handover failure are reduced significantly. In this paper, we present a systematic way to investigate the handover failure problem in eMBMS

Security for 5G Mobile Wireless Networks

The advanced features of 5G mobile wireless network systems yield new security requirements and challenges. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on security of 5G wireless network systems compared to the traditional cellular networks. The paper starts with a review on 5G wireless networks particularities as well as on the new requirements and motivations of 5G wireless security. The potential attacks and security services with the consideration of new service requirements and new use cases in 5G wireless networks are then summarized. The recent development and the existing schemes for the 5G wireless security are presented based on the corresponding security services including authentication, availability, data confidentiality, key management and privacy. The paper further discusses the new security features involving different technologies applied to 5G such as heterogeneous networks, device-to-device communications, massive multiple-input multiple-output, software defined networks and Internet of Things. Motivated by these security research and development activities, we propose a new 5G wireless security architecture, based on which the analysis of identity management and flexible authentication is provided. As a case study, we explore a handover procedure as well as a signaling load scheme to show the advantage of the proposed security architecture. The challenges and future directions of 5G wireless security are finally summarized

Fast Authentication in Multi-Hop Infrastructure-based Communication

Multi-hop infrastructure-based communication is expected to play a vital role in supporting high data-rate multimedia access to mobile devices. The advantages are significant in highly mobile scenarios such as intra-vehicular networks. However, mobile nodes in these networks suffer from long authentication delays, which adversely affect the goodput. In this work, we propose two techniques to shorten the initial authentication delay without compromising the authentication process and overall security. One of the techniques, called fast authentication, admits data traffic temporarily through the network to the gateway and the immediate parent node of the joining node presents network-side authentication. The other technique, called prefetch-assisted authentication, allows the authenticated wireless nodes to prefetch and store the authentication vectors of the potential mobile clients. We investigate several unique features of our proposed schemes and find their performance to be suitable for infrastructure-based multi-hop wireless communications

A secured privacy-preserving multi-level blockchain framework for cluster based VANET

© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Existing research shows that Cluster-based Medium Access Control (CB-MAC) protocols perform well in controlling and managing Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET), but requires ensuring improved security and privacy preserving authentication mechanism. To this end, we propose a multi-level blockchain-based privacy-preserving authentication protocol. The paper thoroughly explains the formation of the authentication centers, vehicles registration, and key generation processes. In the proposed architecture, a global authentication center (GAC) is responsible for storing all vehicle information, while Local Authentication Center (LAC) maintains a blockchain to enable quick handover between internal clusters of vehicle. We also propose a modified control packet format of IEEE 802.11 standards to remove the shortcomings of the traditional MAC protocols. Moreover, cluster formation, membership and cluster-head selection, and merging and leaving processes are implemented while considering the safety and non-safety message transmission to increase the performance. All blockchain communication is performed using high speed 5G internet while encrypted information is transmitted while using the RSA-1024 digital signature algorithm for improved security, integrity, and confidentiality. Our proof-of-concept implements the authentication schema while considering multiple virtual machines. With detailed experiments, we show that the proposed method is more efficient in terms of time and storage when compared to the existing methods. Besides, numerical analysis shows that the proposed transmission protocols outperform traditional MAC and benchmark methods in terms of throughput, delay, and packet dropping rate