Security Architecture for Trustworthy Systems in 5G Era

Abstract

Systems using 5G are expected to be used in various cases of Society 5.0 and Industrie 4.0 such as smart cities, smart factories, and also critical infrastructures. These systems are essential for our life, thus cyberattacks against the system must be prevented. In this paper, we tackle two problems posed by 5G features: system construction using multi-vendor devices and softwarized functions. Specifically, there are supply-chain risks that malicious devices are used in the construction phase. Moreover, the softwarized network functions are easy to be attacked compared to hardware. To cope with these problems, we propose a concept of architecture comprising a blockchain to record security events including supply-chain information and a tamper detection engine to ensure the integrity of software components in 5G system. We implement the initial prototype of the architecture and show its feasibility.