Title: On Security Research Towards Future Mobile Network Generations,
Abstract: Over the last decades, numerous security and privacy issues in all three
active mobile network generations have been revealed that threaten users as
well as network providers. In view of the newest generation (5G) currently
under development, we now have the unique opportunity to identify research
directions for the next generation based on existing security and privacy
issues as well as already proposed defenses. This paper aims to unify security
knowledge on mobile phone networks into a comprehensive overview and to derive
pressing open research questions. To achieve this systematically, we develop a
methodology that categorizes known attacks by their aim, proposed defenses,
underlying causes, and root causes. Further, we assess the impact and the
efficacy of each attack and defense. We then apply this methodology to existing
literature on attacks and defenses in all three network generations. By doing
so, we identify ten causes and four root causes of attacks. Mapping the attacks
to proposed defenses and suggestions for the 5G specification enables us to
uncover open research questions and challenges for the development of
next-generation mobile networks. The problems of unsecured pre-authentication
traffic and jamming attacks exist across all three mobile generations. They
should be addressed in the future, in particular, to wipe out the class of
downgrade attacks and, thereby, strengthen the users' privacy. Further advances
are needed in the areas of inter-operator protocols as well as secure baseband
implementations. Additionally, mitigations against denial-of-service attacks by
smart protocol design represent an open research question.