{"id":42614,"date":"2021-05-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.trendmicro.com\/en_us\/research\/21\/e\/threats-from-a-compromised-4g5g-campus-network.html"},"modified":"2021-05-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T00:00:00","slug":"threats-from-a-compromised-4g-5g-campus-network-sr-threat-researcher-sr-threat-researcher-manager-threat-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/threats-from-a-compromised-4g-5g-campus-network-sr-threat-researcher-sr-threat-researcher-manager-threat-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Threats From a Compromised 4G\/5G Campus Network Sr. Threat Researcher Sr. Threat Researcher Manager, Threat Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Over the past two decades, industrial sectors and everyday users have reaped the benefits of advancements in telecom technologies. At present, the catalyst and basis for future changes is 5G. A sign of this continuing development and influence for some industries is their investment in non-public networks (NPN), also commonly referred to as campus networks.<\/p>\n

The 4G\/5G campus network helps fulfill the growing requirement among industries for higher availability, lower latency, better privacy, and network isolation. However, it can also open security gaps, wherein IT experts and operational technology (OT) personnel might find themselves lacking the knowledge to address telecom-related threats in an expanded attack surface.<\/p>\n

In our research titled \u201cAttacks From 4G\/5G Core Networks: Risks of the Industrial IoT in Compromised Campus Networks<\/a>,\u201d we delve into the security risks involved in deploying a 4G\/5G campus network. After creating our own 4G campus network, we tested different attack scenarios to show what kind of threats these entail and how to defend a campus network against them. In this entry, we give an overview of our research and some of the common attack scenarios that we tested.<\/p>\n

The 4G\/5G Campus Network<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

A campus network is limited within a geographic area, and it is also limited by Ethernet cables and a cellular network.<\/p>\n

For our research, we used only the minimum number of devices for our campus network. Its core network represents either a campus network implemented on-premises or connectivity to an external cellular service provider. It also had a single base station (a small cell). Its other components included an industrial router, a control network, a field network, and multiple programmable logic controllers (PLCs).<\/p>\n

Our research paper gives a more detailed account of both the campus network that we set up and the core network configuration that we used. We also go through the different types of campus networks and deployment options to provide a full guide and introduction to this topic.<\/p>\n

Points of Compromise<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

The attack scenarios that we were able to demonstrate were rooted from a compromised core network. Therefore, we first had to show how an attacker can infiltrate a core network. In our research, we identified four entry points that can allow an attacker to compromise a core network:<\/p>\n