Poster: Towards an Automated Security Testing Framework for Industrial UEs

TL;DR

This paper presents an ongoing effort to develop an automated security testing framework for industrial UEs, aiming to enable comprehensive pre-deployment security evaluation of 5G-enabled industrial devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel automated framework for thorough security testing of industrial UEs, addressing the lack of comprehensive testing methods.

Findings

Framework enables automated security protocol verification

Ensures compliance with 3GPP specifications

Facilitates pre-deployment security assessment

Abstract

With the ongoing adoption of 5G for communication in industrial systems and critical infrastructure, the security of industrial UEs such as 5G-enabled industrial robots becomes an increasingly important topic. Most notably, to meet the stringent security requirements of industrial deployments, industrial UEs not only have to fully comply with the 5G specifications but also implement and use correctly secure communication protocols such as TLS. To ensure the security of industrial UEs, operators of industrial 5G networks rely on security testing before deploying new devices to their production networks. However, currently only isolated tests for individual security aspects of industrial UEs exist, severely hindering comprehensive testing. In this paper, we report on our ongoing efforts to alleviate this situation by creating an automated security testing framework for industrial UEs to comprehensively evaluate their security posture before deployment. With this framework, we aim to provide stakeholders with a fully automated-method to verify that higher-layer security protocols are correctly implemented, while simultaneously ensuring that the UE's protocol stack adheres to 3GPP specifications.