
If 5G Is So Important, Why Isn’t It Secure? - kurthr
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/opinion/5g-cybersecurity-china.html
======
dullgiulio
The author does not seem to understand the engineering background. Security
should not be trusted on such a low layer of the network stack.

No matter which attacker we want protection against, the points to secure are
client and server, not the middle-boxes.

This is one of the well known reasons HTTP/2 is implemented by browser vendors
only on a secure channel.

Here we are talking about implementing security in hardware (bad idea: hard to
upgrade as security requirements and practices chage) at a very low level (at
data link layer). If this is to skip security at higher levels of the stack,
you have to trust all hardware vendors and operators worldwide. If we don't,
we can as well communicate on an insecure channel: that's what modern TLS
provides.

Of course to get all users to use only secure channels is a lot of work, it's
just that there is no easier alternative that provides this same result.

Granted, the author might have something else in mind: he might want
communication to be safe only against some parties, but not others.

~~~
BostonEnginerd
I disagree with you - security is important at all layers of the stack. Right
now, your mobile phone will connect to fake towers (Stingray). This means that
SMS 2FA codes can be intercepted to you, I believe.

[https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/04/06/washington-dc-
aw...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/04/06/washington-dc-awash-with-
fake-cell-towers/)

~~~
mikeash
Consider a world where the cellular data protocol is totally secure and
nothing else changes. Your SMS 2FA codes can still be intercepted by your
service provider and anyone else who handles the message before it gets to
them.

Now consider a world where SMS is end-to-end encrypted. Nobody can intercept
your 2FA codes, no matter how insecure the transport is.

~~~
ethbro
End-to-end encryption doesn't solve your problem when the attacker is your
first link network provider, without out-of-band signaling.

Which I believe was parent's point. Attestation and authentication of network
infrastructure (in a way that would preclude Stingray attacks) is equally
important as anything you layer on top.

Otherwise, without some sort of global PKI you can consult out of band, you're
just rolling the dice that the cellular station you're connecting to isn't
rogue and performing a man in the middle attack.

~~~
mikeash
Without some sort of global PKI, how do you know your data connection actually
goes to your cell provider?

~~~
ethbro
I assume the way most embedded devices guarantee security for their limited
number of use cases -- pre-seed trusted root keys in hardware + validate
signing against them when connecting.

My point was that app-layer security magic doesn't mean much if your first
network step is "connect to closest, highest power base station and implicitly
trust it."

There are wonderful things we can do _on top_ of lower layer protocols, but
the lower layers are pretty damn important too.

~~~
mikeash
That’s how, for example, TLS works too.

I don’t understand what you mean when you say that app-level security doesn’t
mean much if your first network step is compromised. TLS will protect you
there, as will any other decently implemented end-to-end encrypted protocol.

~~~
ethbro
TLS has the benefit of a world-wide PKI built around it to attest to
authentication.

I was trying to note the risks to PKI-less / web of trust participants, and
should have called that out explicitly.

Mostly because I'd much rather live in an encrypted world where WoT is the
dominant mode, vs corporate-controlled PKI. And the biggest risks there seems
like the step no one can get around in ordinary use.

------
peterwwillis
> It was 4G that gave us the smartphone.

Smartphones existed since the early 2000's, well before the first 4G
deployment in 2009. From the Smartphone wikipedia entry:

 _" The first iPhone also faced criticism for not supporting the latest 3G
wireless network standards, but was praised for its hardware and software
design, and its June 2007 release was met with heavy demand"_

~~~
qlm
I have had 4g disabled for years as I’ve found it somehow slower and
significantly less reliable than 3G, across multiple devices. I can stream
music and watch YouTube videos just fine.

This is on O2 (UK). Maybe I need a new network.

~~~
amaccuish
I'm on O2 too and it's garbage. I can't wait till my contract is up to switch.
I often have full signal but nothing will load, whilst mates on Three or EE
are fine. When it does work, it's so slow. And it's not a local thing either,
it's everywhere I go.

~~~
marcusjt
Interesting, post above yours says O2 and Vodafone share network, and I'm on
Vodafone but rarely if ever have issues.

------
okl
I find nothing in the article that shows 5G is not secure. It is a blatant
appeal to increase FCC's power and funding.

Shame on the NYT for publishing unsubstantiated position papers written by a
political operator ("By Tom Wheeler, Mr. Wheeler is a former chairman of the
Federal Communications Commission.") under a misleading headline.

~~~
tzs
You should look deeper. Wheeler has had an interesting career.

At one time he was head of the main cable industry trade group, back when
cable was trying to be David to the TV network's over-the-air Goliath. This
was when cable was just about video, because cable internet had not yet been
invented.

Later, he was head of the main cellular and wireless trade group, when they
were the newcomers for both voice and data, against the big wired
telecommunications companies.

These past positions had a lot of people worried when he was appointed FCC
chairman, over concern that he would favor industry. What most observers
failed to notice was both of those positions were at times when their
respective industries were the upstarts, going against established monopolies
or near monopolies, trying to bring competition and wider services to
consumers. In other words, he represented those industries at a time when
being pro-cable or pro-wireless, respectively, was being pro-consumer.

When he was at the FCC, several decades after his association with the cable
industry, and about a decade after his association with the wireless industry,
when the interests of those industries and consumers had diverged, he tended
to go with the consumer side. The cable and wireless companies were definitely
not fans of Wheeler's FCC actions, fighting in court against almost everything
he did.

In the 20 or so years between the job representing the cable industry and the
job representing the wireless industry, he was a founder or major executive in
several companies, including at least one that failed due to lack of net
neutrality. Some of these companies have been telecommunications related, but
some had nothing to do with that (e.g., one is in aerospace components, and
one or more have been in banking).

He's also a former director of PBS and was chairman and president of the
National Archives Foundation. He's combined his interest in American history
and telecommunication in a well reviewed book about the Civil War called "Mr.
Lincoln's T-Mails: How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil
War" [1].

Dismissing him as merely a "political operator" seems rather shallow.

[1]
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061129801/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061129801/)

~~~
leevlad
Wheeler's past history doesn't invalidate the article's lack of substance.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Agreed. In fact the disconnect should make anyone reasonable ask why he would
write such an article.

------
whatshisface
The USG has a bad history when it comes to "aiding" telecommunications
security[0]. Historically they have prioritized making sure things are weak
against their own attacks over making sure things are secure against other
attacks (and, of course, from the perspective of a private citizen the
government's attacks may well be malicious.)

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip)

------
xxpor
I realize he's writing to a general audience here, but I hope he writes a more
technical version of what the heck he's talking about here. 5G is basically
L1. IMO most of the security should happen at higher layers, for practical
implementation reasons as well as flexability. For how long it's going to be
around, anything built into the protocol will probably be broken at some
point, and since it's L1 it's extremely hard to fix.

~~~
est31
I definitely don't want anyone to tap into my phone calls or SMS. And I also
don't want carriers to sell the data they collect about me, or have insecure
infrastructure so that it can be obtained by criminals. It's not that I'm not
giving them any money, they shouldn't sell my data.

~~~
dullgiulio
Agreed, but it can be done at higher layers. Just use some secure app instead
of SMS and phone calls.

The carrier should not be able to know much about you, except some vague
metadata (an histogram of the amount of data you exchanged with some IPs.)

~~~
bdamm
This is a common and incorrect misconception.

The network needs security, as does the applications running on it. These are
different security layers, and cannot be provided together.

With an insecure network, even if your applications are secure, then bad
actors (government, company, whoever) have a much easier time attacking your
phone directly. Perfectly secure applications and an insecure network leaves
your phone open to attack from nearby radios. If we assume your applications
are all perfectly secure, and your phone software and hardware are also all
perfectly secure, then that leaves abuse of the network as a tool to affect
denial of service, spying on presence meta-data, and not limited to the
carrier.

But of course there are no perfectly secure applications, nor any perfectly
secure phones. So keep in mind that the weak network greatly expands the
attack surface from which bad actors can mess with your phone.

This isn't a problem solved with layer-7 security.

~~~
kstenerud
Since the infrastructure is beholden to governments, one must assume that the
data link layer is compromised.

------
kstenerud
It's not secure because any widely rolled out physical layer is by definition
compromised.

All infrastructure in a country is beholden to that country's government, and
that will never change. Any attempt to put encryption into a widely used
physical layer will fail, because no committee will agree on an effective
implementation that actually works (governments WILL subvert any committee).
Governments will insist upon backdoors or sniffers, and hardware has the
disadvantage of being in one physical place, easily targeted by a government.

The physical layer is compromised, and always will be.

------
LukeShu
_> "It was 4G that gave us the smartphone."_

The iPhone was released in June 2007, more than 3 years before the first LTE
phone was released in November 2010. The iPhone wasn't the first smartphone,
but it did kick off the smartphone boom. And it did it without even 3G; the
original iPhone only supported 2G (despite widespread, but not universal,
rollout of 3G in the USA).

~~~
thepangolino
The first Iphone didn't even have 3G.

~~~
LukeShu
Yes, I said that.

------
shittyadmin
Is this article just implying that because security isn't regulated the
network is insecure? Or has some legitimate vulnerability been found here?
Seems very politicized too.

~~~
leevlad
I was hoping to see at least some hints as to why the security of 5G is flawed
in its current state. The only argument I seem to parse out of this is what
you stated.

Note that the author is Tom Wheeler - former chairman of the FCC. It does seem
to be a 100% political piece rather than anything to do with the tech.

------
diffeomorphism
I get that it is an opinion piece, but claiming that autonomous cars need 5G
or that these cars would be remote controlled (so not autonomous at all and
useless in a tunnel) makes this article just sound horribly uninformed.

~~~
Dirlewanger
Why? It's the truth. Tesla is already connected to cellular networks. Once 5G
really takes off, what makes you think manufacturers aren't going to race to
have the first autonomous vehicle connected via 5G? There will be whole
marketing campaigns revolving around that very thing.

~~~
_underfl0w_
I believe the parent was trying to point out the inconsistencies in calling
something "autonomous" yet still saying that it's incapable to doing things
without a cell connection.

------
amaccuish
> It was 4G that gave us the smartphone

I remember using my trusty BlackBerry back with 2G. The first iPhone launched
with just 2G. If you want to talk about the general rise of the smartphone,
then it would be about 3G.

------
zw123456
Almost any wireless link will be subject to man in the middle attacks by
nature, in my view. If you can sniff the medium, you eventually can probably
find a way to intercept it.

Wired connections are more secure, or perceived to be so because the
assumption is that sniffing the medium is more difficult, which is generally
true because someone would have to physically make a connection (unauthorized)
to your cable and the assumption is that it would be detected (perhaps).

It's just a lot easier to sniff your channel over the air.

5G can be implemented on any piece of spectrum, sub-1Ghz, mid-Ghz or so called
mm-wave. One thing about mm-wave that makes it "more cable like" is the highly
directional nature. 5G that is being deployed on mm-wave bands (e.g. 28Ghz)
have extremely small beam widths due to the use of Phased Array antennas. This
makes it much more difficult to "sting-ray". or at least is more easily
detected.

Having said all this... everyone should always keep in mind that whatever
wireless network you are on, GSM, CDMA, HSPA, LTE, Wifi, 5G whatever, you
cannot count on the phy layer for protection.

------
IOT_Apprentice
Well, first off, is there a way to get stingrays broken such that they would
be identified as rogue base stations and locked out as untrusted? If not, then
hello to being compromised. Not that it would stop the NSA, but at least 3rd
party or rogue states would not be able to deploy them if this could be
achieved.

------
hxsvui
To me, it's absolutely unclear what the author is actually talking about.
Should telcos be responsible for monitoring the devices in their network?

Mobile networks provide Internet access with all the risks associated to the
Internet. But the radio access is reasonably secure, if we compare with public
WiFi. It's encrypted, authenticated and the operators are more trustworthy
than the random person that puts up an Access-Point with years-old firmware.
(the operators have something to loose here)

------
stunt
We haven't built anything flawless so I'm not sure if it is fair to blame
anyone for building something that might not be secure without any evidence.

No matter who is going to lead 5G technology, The service provider will have
full control as they already have. They will be still able to do everything
that they are doing already.

So we will have our domestic controls and it is secure it that sense.

Perhaps, What we might not have is having our backdoors to have the same
powers in all other countries around the world.

------
aportnoy
Slightly off topic, but I wonder how much net savings (% world GDP?) would we
have if there was no need to secure our communications. At least some energy
and time would be saved as a result, comms would be faster.

~~~
logifail
I wonder how many (security-related) jobs would be lost as result?

------
Aloha
If you put the security in the baseband, you're stuck with whatever you put in
there for many decades, if you put it in higher level protocols, you're
probably not.

------
a-dub
what applications, exactly, are waiting in the wings for more mobile
bandwidth? i can already stream video in both directions...

i think i'd prefer more innovation in terms of security and privacy rather
than more bandwidth that nobody really knows what to do with...

------
waynecochran

         The new Congress should use its oversight power 
         to explore just why the administration has failed to do
         to protect against that risk, ...
    

New York Times, grammar, really?

------
scotty79
Is 5G so important?

~~~
some_random
Yes

~~~
scotty79
Why? It's just faster and I already can stream video and play realtime games
on 4g. What are other more demanding applications?

~~~
Nokinside
No. It's not just faster.

I understand that US based media and forums like HN are little behind on
mobile tech, but how it is that this thing persists even 2019.

For starters, There is bandwidth not owned by carriers. You can have your own
5G hubs. Companies can have their own 5G networks in factories. Unlike Wi-Fi,
you can have more control of latency and reliability. So for example factory
with 5G networking between robots etc. is possibility.

Connection density, energy efficiency, area data rate, very low latency,
virtual networks etc. allow completely different applications.

Say, you have peak utilization of graphics card for gaming around 5%, if you
can have the card in the edge servers and play the game by streaming it from
nearby servers, it's more efficient use of HW and enables mobile games that
phone hardware does not support. South Korea or some Chinese cities might be
the first to lead mobile gaming to this direction.

ps. Nvidia has already demoed GPU in base station over 5G with 60Hz 16ms lag
and promises 3ms in the near future.

~~~
jauer
Companies already can have their own 4G networks in factories etc. It's fairly
common in mining or oil fields.

There have been wireless access platforms with much more control over latency
and robustness for well over a decade.

Bandwidth not owned by carriers is also not new. LTE-U is a recent example.

This all sounds similar to the hype that comes with every other new generation
of last-mile access technology.

~~~
Dylan16807
> Companies already can have their own 4G networks in factories etc. It's
> fairly common in mining or oil fields.

Without getting special permission from a carrier? The ability to set up your
own wireless equipment that can supply normal phones is an important use case.

> Bandwidth not owned by carriers is also not new. LTE-U is a recent example.

Wikipedia says LTE-U died. And as far as I can tell LTE-LAA only speeds up
_existing_ LTE connections; it can't work standalone. There's MulteFire? It's
only half-developed though.

~~~
kiwijamo
I wonder if OP is confusing factories getting a carrier to install a cell site
(whether it be a pico/microcell or a proper macrocell site) on/near the
factory property. It's not unusual for that to happen (especially if said
factory is a big customer for the carrier) but it wouldn't be their own 4G
network. Would be interested if any actual examples of real life non-carrier
4G networks could be provided.

~~~
jauer
I'm well aware of the differences between pico, macro etc. and am referring
specifically to usage of privately owned eNodeBs running in spectrum that is
either unlicensed, sublicensed, or just reused without authorization because
the deployment site is sufficiently rural.

> Would be interested if any actual examples of real life non-carrier 4G
> networks could be provided.

For one, you can just look for companies deploying Redline, Nokia, etc eNodeBs
that aren't traditional telcos...

[http://rdlcom.com/applications/private-
lte](http://rdlcom.com/applications/private-lte)

LTE equipment for 5.8Ghz spectrum / LTE-U has been on the market for some time
and in use by private industry and boutique service providers. E.g.
[https://www.doubleradius.com/Manufacturers/Kits/baicells-
sta...](https://www.doubleradius.com/Manufacturers/Kits/baicells-starter-kit-
lte-u.html)

------
karolusrex
I was expecting a discussion around the safety around 5G, as there is no
scientific consensus around whether 5g is actually harmful to humans.
[https://www.jrseco.com/european-union-5g-appeal-
scientists-w...](https://www.jrseco.com/european-union-5g-appeal-scientists-
warn-of-potential-serious-health-effects-of-5g/)

~~~
gruez
since when is "secure" ever associated with "healthy"?

~~~
heinrich5991
In German, the words for "secure" and "safe" are the same. 5G being safe
doesn't sound too far from 5G being healthy.

~~~
OJFord
Even in this context?

They're synonyms in English in some contexts, (e.g. 'I feel safe/secure here')
just not this one.

