Security News
5G progress in connections and deployments continues despite the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn according to 5G Americas. Chris Pearson, President, 5G Americas said, "Globally, 5G remains the fast-growing generation of wireless cellular technology ever, even as the world is gripped with a pandemic. In North America, we are seeing consistent, strong uptake of new 5G subscribers as new devices have been released that can take advantage of low-band and millimeter wave frequencies. At the same time, new network capabilities are being added."
Samsung Electronics announced a successful demonstration of its new drone-based antenna configuration measurement solution for 4G and 5G networks in the company's campus. The deep learning-based artificial intelligence solution instantly verified the rotation and tilt of the antennas, so that the engineers could determine if the antennas were installed correctly at predefined optimal angles.
The global number of 5G subscriptions to top 190 million by the end of 2020 and 2.8 billion by the end of 2025, according to a report by Ericsson. "The spread of COVID-19 has prompted people all over the world to change their daily lives and, in many cases, work or study from home. This has led to a rapid shift of network traffic from business to residential areas," says Fredrik Jejdling, Executive VP and Head of Networks, Ericsson.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced HPE Edge Orchestrator, a SaaS-based offering that enables telcos to deploy innovative new edge computing services to customers via IT infrastructure located at the edge of telco networks or on customer premises. HPE Edge Orchestrator enables telcos to monetize the 5G network and telco cloud while bringing lower latency, increased security and enhanced end-user experiences to their customers.
The US is letting blacklisted Chinese technology giant Huawei back into the fold when it comes to companies working together to set standards for 5G telecom networks. US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross this week announced a new rule allowing companies to share technology with Huawei for the purpose of developing standards for the new generation of wireless services.
High impact vulnerabilities in modern communication protocol used by mobile network operators can be exploited to intercept user data and carry out impersonation, fraud, and denial of service attacks, cautions a newly published research. The findings are part of a new Vulnerabilities in LTE and 5G Networks 2020 report published by London-based cybersecurity firm Positive Technologies last week.
Vulnerabilities in the GPRS Tunnelling Protocol expose 4G and 5G cellular networks to a variety of attacks, including denial-of-service, user impersonation, and fraud, Positive Technologies security researchers warn. Some of the attacks may be performed with the simple use of a mobile phone and all of the tested networks were found vulnerable to DoS, impersonation, and fraud, the researchers say.
Researchers with Positive Technologies say that a legacy standard known as GPRS Tunneling Protocol is the culprit behind security issues that will leave many of the early 5G networks open to attacks such as spoofing, man-in-the-middle, and denial of service. Introduced during the earliest upgrades to 2G broadband networks and used through the current 4G standard, GTP allows for data packet transfer between various wireless networks and carriers.
Spirent Communications announced its extensive work with Rakuten Mobile in support of the operator's current LTE services, planned 5G Non-Standalone and Standalone rollout in Japan for its world-first fully virtualized cloud native mobile network. Rakuten Mobile required groundbreaking testing capabilities to assure the performance of new services and selected Spirent Landslide for core network testing.
Some have claimed the Trump administration's concerns have more to do with losing the 5G arms race than anything else, but ostensibly its chief worries have been chalked up to security, with the US government claiming Huawei's 5G kit could be backdoored by Beijing. For its part, earlier this year, the UK's Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport labelled Huawei as a "High-risk" vendor over its perceived ties to the Chinese government, and issued strong new rules prohibiting carriers from using the firm's equipment within the core 5G network.