Security analysis of introducing 5G in V2X communications

Abstract

Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is an area that interests many research institutions as well as the industry. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has developed standards for these communications. Those standards describe a protocol stack that builds on top of the WiFi protocol 802.11p, which offers no security. With the active development of 5G, many companies and research institutes are now interested in using this new technology in V2X communications. The possibility to exchange 802.11p with 5G enables, among many other improvements, enhancing the performance of the ETSI defined security mechanisms. At the same time the new features might also bring new vulnerabilities. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the introduction of 5G in V2X communications affects security. We show that the transition from 802.11p to 5G is possible but not easy, and it requires certain changes to the rest of the protocol stack. Furthermore, several possible improvements of the security mechanisms provided higher up in the stack are proposed. The improvements include removal of the current certificate mechanism for authentication, since certain features of 5G will make it redundant. Finally, the pros and cons of introducing 5G in V2X communications are discussed.