A Brief Survey of Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) Security

TL;DR

This survey reviews the security challenges of O-RAN architecture, analyzing attack surfaces like openness, virtualization, network slicing, and machine learning, and discusses mitigation strategies to guide secure implementation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of security issues and mitigation techniques in O-RAN, highlighting areas needing attention during early development stages.

Findings

Identifies key attack surfaces in O-RAN architecture.

Summarizes existing mitigation methods for security threats.

Offers recommendations for secure O-RAN deployment.

Abstract

Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN), a novel architecture that separates the traditional radio access network (RAN) into multiple disaggregated components, leads a revolution in the telecommunication ecosystems. Compared to the traditional RAN, the proposed O-RAN paradigm is more flexible and more cost-effective for the operators, vendors, and the public. The key design considerations of O-RAN include virtualization and intelligent capabilities in order to meet the new requirements of 5G. However, because of the open nature and the newly imported techniques in O-RAN architecture, the assessment of the security in O-RAN architecture during its early development stage is crucial. This project aims to present an investigation of the current ORAN architecture from several attack surfaces, including (1) Architectural openness, (2) Cloud and Virtualization, (3) Network slicing, and (4) Machine Learning. The existing attack surfaces and corresponding mitigation methods of these attacks are also surveyed and provided in this report, serving as a guiding principle and valuable recommendation for the O-RAN implementers and framework designers.