AN EVALUATION OF DE-ANONYMIZATION ATTACKS AGAINST PHYSICAL DOWNLINK SHARED CHANNEL DATA IN 5G NEW RADIO

The development and adoption of 5G technology is rapidly progressing worldwide, and users of this technology are expected to increase to three billion by 2026. Third generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has designed the specifications of this new network infrastructure with security in mind; however, ongoing research continues to verify and scrutinize the system to help keep the data traveling this network safe. This thesis evaluates the feasibility and performance of three different attacks on the anonymity of low-density parity-check (LDPC) encoded data in 5G physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH), then compares the findings to a similar study done of Polar coded data in physical downlink control channel (PDCCH). The anonymity attacks make use of a scrambling sequence, which is associated to a unique radio network temporary identifier (RNTI) and added to encoded data before transmission. Brute-force attacks, known plaintext attacks, and analysis using multiple messages were used to explore the security of this scrambling sequence and RNTI. This paper finds the standards used in PDSCH to provide more robust security than PDCCH and recommends the adaptation of parameters used in PDSCH in future applications.
http://archive.org/details/anevaluationofde1094568323
Lieutenant, United States Navy
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