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Bruce Schneier's Foreign Policy essay in 5G security argues that we're unduly focused on the possibility of Chinese manufacturers inserting backdoors or killswitches in 5G equipment, and not focused enough on intrinsic weakness in a badly defined, badly developed standard wherein "near-term corporate profits prevailed against broader social good."
Schneier points to a variety of factors contributing to 5G's intrinsic, irreparable unsuitability: first, the US government pushed for weaker security in order to ensure that it could conduct domestic surveillance; the standards themselves are so complex as to be impossible to implement securely; and the system calls for software running on dynamically configurable hardware, which "dramatically increases the points vulnerable to attack."
Moreover, 5G is backwards compatible with earlier protocols, inheriting all their insecurities, and generating new ones where these protocols' weak spots can be chained together to create attacks that each protocol was, in and of itself immune to, but which the system remains vulnerable to.
https://boingboing.net/2020/01/14/de...arrival-2.html
Schneier points to a variety of factors contributing to 5G's intrinsic, irreparable unsuitability: first, the US government pushed for weaker security in order to ensure that it could conduct domestic surveillance; the standards themselves are so complex as to be impossible to implement securely; and the system calls for software running on dynamically configurable hardware, which "dramatically increases the points vulnerable to attack."
Moreover, 5G is backwards compatible with earlier protocols, inheriting all their insecurities, and generating new ones where these protocols' weak spots can be chained together to create attacks that each protocol was, in and of itself immune to, but which the system remains vulnerable to.
https://boingboing.net/2020/01/14/de...arrival-2.html