Distributed Unit Security for 5G Base-Stations using Blockchain

Abstract

5G in the United States has been rapidly growing this past year as the New Radio (NR) standards have been finalized. The top three US cellular carriers cover most major cities in 2019, and the plans are to cover most of the nation by the close of 2020. Field testing shows that 5G is meeting the promise of gigabit speeds and single digit latency over millimeter wave. 5G Security is ever so more critical with the expectation of massive IoT, M2M, VANET, and High-Speed Fixed Wireless. More devices will rely on commercially available wireless internet, it should be expected that 5G Security will be thoroughly tested by unscrupulous individuals. To enhance security, this paper will cover utilizing Blockchain for identity management of the next generation NodeB (gNB) for the user equipment (UE) would make Rogue Cellsite, man-in-the-middle-attacks, or Stingray much harder to perform. This would prevent the UE from blindly connecting to any gNB it sees and sharing sensitive information because of the connection requested from an untrusted source. While there are other potential security flaws in 5G, implementing Blockchain in a commercial network would enhance attach and handover security for all devices that use 5G.