TESLA-for-5G: Broadcast Authentication for 5G Networks Using TESLA
For 5G user equipments, TF5 provides efficient broadcast authentication against fake base station attacks, reducing computational burden while maintaining security.
TESLA-for-5G (TF5) is a broadcast authentication protocol for 5G SIB1 that replaces per-message digital signatures with symmetric MAC and delayed key disclosure, reducing UE computation overhead. Formal verification in Tamarin and implementation on OpenAirInterface show favorable costs compared to prior approaches.
5G base stations broadcast unauthenticated system information (SI) that every user equipment (UE) reads during cell selection. This enables attackers to broadcast forged SI from a fake base station (FBS), deceiving UEs into camping on it. Prior approaches require UEs to authenticate System Information Block 1 (SIB1) using digital signatures. This necessitates computation-heavy verification for every SIB1 reception, imposing a significant burden on resource-constrained UEs. We propose TESLA-for-5G (TF5), a broadcast authentication protocol for 5G SIB1 that combines TESLA with GG09 Schnorr-like identity-based signatures (IBS). In the steady state, TF5 enables UEs to authenticate each SIB1 message using a symmetric MAC and delayed key disclosure, eliminating the need for per-message digital signatures. Initial trust is bootstrapped during cell entry using a lightweight GG09 IBS over the TESLA parameters, avoiding certificate distribution overhead. We formally verify TF5 in Tamarin under a Dolev-Yao adversary and demonstrate its favorable computation, communication, and storage costs through both an implementation on the OpenAirInterface 5G stack and trace-driven analysis.