Building and Utilizing Small-Scale Testbed for Research on 5G SA Network-Related Security Vulnerabilities

Abstract

When it comes to the fourth-generation mobile networks (4G, Long Term Evolution (LTE)) and, to go one step further, 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) relying on 4G core, it was possible to easily set up testbeds using open source projects and Software Defined Radio (SDR) hardware. In particular, the sheer power of open source solutions like, srsLTE [35] and OpenLTE [42], with the use of low-cost SDR devices like Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) [33] and LimeSDR [26], unbridled the race toward 4G/5G NSA testbeds capable of providing radio network coverage, They have been actively utilized by the research community, thereby successfully finding a number of security threats and troubling vulnerabilities. Despite the foregoing, those open source implementations are not completed, as far as 5G Standalone (SA) mobile networks are concerned, so those are considered as incapable of creating testbeds and inapplicable for security threat assessment in the real ecosystem. In such contexts, this article in an attempt to establish a foothold for research of 5G Core network security will introduce considerations and approaches to set up a small-scale lab testbed for 5G SA mobile networking.