Characterizing 5G vulnerabilities in an expeditionary environment

As 5G emerges as a backbone of many military systems and missions it is critical to ensure network integrity. Many DoD missions, including those in an expeditionary environment require the use of an already existing 5G network that may not be deployed and managed by the United States. Therefore, a light-weight portable system that can verify the integrity of a third party 5G network is needed. We propose a two-faceted approach to assess both security and vulnerabilities of the 5G network. The first part obtains security configuration parameters including and beyond the physical layer (PHY) to assess the types of security and authentication employed by the 5G network. This is implemented with a 5G modem connecting to the network as a UE and receiving configuration parameters through the initial attach as well as subsequent communication. The second part delivers known exploits against the network and measures network resilience to produce a vulnerability assessment. This is implemented with a base station unit as well as a Software Defined Radio (SDR) functioning as an arbitrary waveform generator to carry out jamming, denial-of-service, man-in-the-middle and fuzzing attacks.