Network and Physical Layer Attacks and countermeasures to AI-Enabled 6G O-RAN

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) will play an increasing role in cellular network deployment, configuration and management. This paper examines the security implications of AI-driven 6G radio access networks (RANs). While the expected timeline for 6G standardization is still several years out, pre-standardization efforts related to 6G security are already ongoing and will benefit from fundamental and experimental research. The Open RAN (O-RAN) describes an industry-driven open architecture and interfaces for building next generation RANs with AI control. Considering this architecture, we identify the critical threats to data driven network and physical layer elements, the corresponding countermeasures, and the research directions.

A Survey on Open Radio Access Networks: Challenges, Research Directions, and Open Source Approaches

“…Incorporating AI/ML in O-RAN architecture, known as the intelligence pillar, also adds a new surface threat targeting AI/ML-related functions in O-RAN. Other works have also discussed the new security challenges of using AI/ML in mobile networks [105,106]. Another additional threat surface comes from using open-source code.…”

“…Hopefully, the O-RAN Alliance can develop a secure architecture, framework, and guidelines for its Open RAN standards. Other references have also discussed some defense mechanisms to increase software security in addition to these requirements and protocols, such as authentication and access control, cryptography, secure virtualization, anonymity and obfuscation, resilience assurance, lightweight security based on the physical layer, and intrusion detection mechanisms [103,106,110,111]. SFG has also made modeling and analysis of security threats in the O-RAN architecture in [104].…”