5G and Cybersecurity: New Unknown Security Threats Are Ahead.
Do you remember when humans invented the internet and changed the way they live on this planet? Well! humans are back again to invent the 5G network and give themselves a load of new opportunities to live a more advanced, fast, and smart life.
5G network is the next Generation of mobile broadband after the currently used 4G LTE. Using what is called mmWaves, 5G offer speed of up to 5 Gbps with almost no latency. With internet speed 100 times faster than 4G, this next generation of mobile broadband will definitely change people’s lives. Self-driving vehicles will invade the streets and highways. Virtual reality ( VR ) and Augmented Reality ( AR ) will experience a new level of innovation; and humans will be able to control and work with heavy machines remotely due to the low-level of latency. Just imagine a manager fixing a broken machine right from home and at the after-work hours. Also, a great amount of IoT devices will be able to communicate reliably, in real-time, and in a small geographic area. This will give developers and inventors a huge amount of opportunities to create new inventions and develop others. Additionally, the 5G network will serve Gamers with a whole new level of gaming under the name of cloud-gaming.
One of the obstacles that face 5G is the fact that mmWave have less geographic coverage than 4G does. Yet, experts and frontline telecommunication corporations are working on this dilemma to make 5G network available for as many geo-areas as possible. However, this dilemma can be avoided using what is called small cells and other technology like fog computing.
Corporations such as Qualcomm, Version, AT&T, Samsung, T-Mobile, BT telecommunication, Huawei and many others all have shown a great amount of determination, dedication, and ambition to make 5G network something we look forward to use in the upcoming years. These pretentious corporations are still working as separated consortium to make 5G available to us this year ( 2019 ) only on the selected areas.
Enough hype! Let’s switch the remote and see what are 5G security dangers.
If given the right and perfect possibilities, Humans creativeness is something interminable, and so does their abilities to harm. No matter how smart, innovative and advanced a technology can be, it still a double-edged sword that hackers will use to devastate and create chaos for their benefits. 5G is no exception. In fact, with all the powerfulness and opportunities it will bring to the tech industry, it will give hackers a range of possibilities to make more powerful digital and physical catastrophes. This is due to the fact that there are vulnerabilities to every new technology, and that no technology is 100% secure. To expound this idea, let’s go back in time, maybe sixteen years before, after the 3G wireless network is presented to people, new digital attack such as spam messages started to take over people’s privacy and money.
humans will depend on 5G more than they did for the previous mobile broadband standards, thus, it will provide them with the ability to act on high amounts of data with the fastest internet connection ever. This will result in the birth of new attack vectors. For now, 5G is still an untested and immature technology and cybercriminals are always creative and motivated when it comes to abusing newly applied technologies. Those hackers’ proactiveness and enthusiasm are what make security experts put on concerns of new unknown security threats that 5G network will bring to us.
For now, we only know that 5G capabilities will give DDoS attack an entirely new form of potency. How? That’s because of the high demand for IoT and IIoT devices in the upcoming years. According to IoT Analytics, The number of IoT devices used by humans is expected to hit 21.5 billion by 2025. After 5G will become more available to people and in a wide range of cities, hackers will be able to create a tremendous number of botnets and take down targets savagely. At that time, we should expect to see websites going down instantly and for a long time period due to the massive number of packets provided by those IoT devices ( zombies ).
Furthermore, and since the number of connected devices will increase, the spread of malware will be more sophisticated than ever. More devices will be affected in a short time basis. Plus, hackers will be more motivated to make more ransomware and spread them across the world. Back to the idea of controlling heavy IIoT machines, just imagine what a hacker can do if he or she is able to control a robotic machine in a production environment. Well! The unknown can be very frightening.
For all this and that, IT security pros and leaders are required take into account all these possibilities and build foundational security base and invent more modern levels of security. The goal is to tackle — at least the already recognized security threats. 5G network is a very promising mobile broadband standard and it will surely give people a new experience of wireless networks, but security should stay among the top priorities for all the contributing factors in the built of this technology.
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