Security is crucial for wireless communication networks, especially as quantum computing advances rapidly. It won’t be long before quantum attacks become feasible, potentially crippling large wireless networks within minutes. Current methods for securing connections and transactions—such as keys, certificates, and data—could be compromised by quantum computers. One concern is the use of fake base stations with stronger signal strengths to lure users into connecting with them in wireless communication network. A quantum-powered attacker could easily break traditional encryption algorithms and launch various attacks almost instantly. An example of this is the "bidding down" attack, where an attacker convinces both the user and network entities that security features are not upheld, despite their actual presence. This type of attack exploits the security weaknesses of older mobile networks. This paper explores security advancements and challenges related to contemporary public key cryptography, including RSA algorithms based on factorization and discrete logarithm problems with Diffie-Hellman and Elliptic-Curve Cryptography (ECC). While these methods provide adequate protection today, quantum computers could potentially break these algorithms or weaken cryptographic keys and hashes within minutes. Quantum cryptography, or quantum-resistant cryptography, objectives to develop algorithms and protocols resilient to quantum computing threats. This paper examines security vulnerabilities in wireless communication networks, focusing on key confirmation and authentication mechanisms. We propose a robust authentication and key agreement protocol for 5G networks using quantum-resistant cryptography. Our proposed protocol, verified with a verification tool, enhances the security of the authentication and key agreement procedures in wireless communication networks.
Security is crucial for wireless communication networks, especially as quantum computing advances rapidly. It won’t be long before quantum attacks become feasible, potentially crippling large wireless networks within minutes. Current methods for securing connections and transactions—such as keys, certificates, and data—could be compromised by quantum computers. One concern is the use of fake base stations with stronger signal strengths to lure users into connecting with them in wireless communication network. A quantum-powered attacker could easily break traditional encryption algorithms and launch various attacks almost instantly. An example of this is the "bidding down" attack, where an attacker convinces both the user and network entities that security features are not upheld, despite their actual presence. This type of attack exploits the security weaknesses of older mobile networks. This paper explores security advancements and challenges related to contemporary public key cryptography, including RSA algorithms based on factorization and discrete logarithm problems with Diffie-Hellman and Elliptic-Curve Cryptography (ECC). While these methods provide adequate protection today, quantum computers could potentially break these algorithms or weaken cryptographic keys and hashes within minutes. Quantum cryptography, or quantum-resistant cryptography, objectives to develop algorithms and protocols resilient to quantum computing threats. This paper examines security vulnerabilities in wireless communication networks, focusing on key confirmation and authentication mechanisms. We propose a robust authentication and key agreement protocol for 5G networks using quantum-resistant cryptography. Our proposed protocol, verified with a verification tool, enhances the security of the authentication and key agreement procedures in wireless communication networks.
The potential of the swift development of quantum computing is an extreme danger to the traditional cryptographic programs, and they are the foundation of the modern communication infrastructure. RSA and ECC are classical public-key algorithms that can be successfully quantum-attacked, in particular, Shor's algorithm can easily factor large integers and calculate discrete logarithms (Bernstein et al., 2017). The Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) has become the key to secure the next-generation communication networks against these threats, which relies on lattice problem-based algorithms, hash-based based algorithms, multivariate polynomials-based algorithms, and code-based cryptography. The paper examines the concepts, design, and implementation issues of PQC within current network infrastructure focusing on the secure transmission of data, authentication, and key management in the upcoming 5G and 6G networks. The approach will include the survey of existing algorithms of PQC, model the integration of protocol in the communication systems and test computational efficiency, security strength, and scalability. It has been found that PQC is suitable to protect network communications against quantum attackers, and achieves reasonable performance, though trade-offs can be seen in terms of computation overhead, key size, and latency. The research offers understanding to the researcher, network engineers and policy makers in order to adopt quantum resistant cryptography protocols to secure the confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of information in the future communication networks.
The rise of quantum computing poses a serious threat to traditional cryptosystems, such as RSA and ECC, which rely on the mathematical problem of factoring large numbers and dealing with discrete logarithms Quantum algorithms such as Shor and Grover can solve solve these problems effectively, so that classical The encryption is simple. This research addresses the urgent need for quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms to protect next-generation networks, including 5G, IoT, and cloud computing, from future quantum attacks. The main objective of this study is to investigate the efficiency and scalability of quantum post-cryptography techniques, especially lattice-based cryptography, and to evaluate their performance in comparison with traditional cryptography and other post-quantum techniques. It also provides robust protection against quantum attacks and reasonable scalability to large networks, while delivering large key size requirements, low connectivity and excess capacity. The study concludes that lattice-based cryptography is an appropriate solution that balances quantum resistance with practical performance in real-world applications to ensure secure communications in the post-quantum era.
The evolution of 6G networks necessitates robust authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocols to counter emerging security challenges, particularly the threat posed by quantum computing. Existing 5G-AKA protocols remain vulnerable to user tracking, replay attacks, and false base station impersonation, while Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and RSA-based key exchanges face imminent obsolescence due to quantum attacks. This study examines the vulnerabilities of 5G-AKA and explores hybrid post-quantum cryptography (PQC) as a transitional security solution for 6G networks. We evaluate NIST-standardized PQC algorithms, focusing on their computational overhead, key size efficiency, and adaptability to heterogeneous network environments, including IoT and ultra-low latency applications. A comparative analysis of hybrid cryptographic schemes demonstrates that lattice-based (Kyber, Dilithium), hash-based (SPHINCS+), and code-based (BIKE, Classic McEliece) PQC techniques provide varying trade-offs between security, efficiency, and deployment feasibility. Furthermore, we propose a quantum-resistant 6G-AKA framework, integrating hybrid PQC, AI-driven trust mechanisms, and decentralized authentication to ensure scalability and interoperability. Experimental benchmarks highlight potential performance constraints, including latency in PQC-based key exchange and resource limitations in edge computing. Addressing these challenges requires the optimization of lightweight PQC implementations, formal security validation, and global standardization efforts. Our findings provide a roadmap for the secure transition to 6G authentication protocols, ensuring resilience against both classical and quantum threats.
The rapid evolution of 5G and emerging 6G telecom networks introduces new security challenges due to the potential threat posed by quantum computing to conventional cryptographic algorithms. This study proposes a post-quantum cryptographic framework for protecting critical 5G and 6G telecom infrastructure against quantum-enabled attacks. The framework investigates quantum-resistant cryptographic mechanisms for secure key establishment, authentication, data confidentiality, and communication integrity. Performance is evaluated using key size, encryption and decryption time, computational overhead, latency, and throughput. The proposed approach aims to achieve a balance between quantum resistance and network efficiency, providing a scalable and resilient security solution for next-generation wireless communication environments.
The development of quantum computers poses a new security threat to network infrastructures and services, as they will be powerful enough to break the most common forms of digital encryption. Existing encryption services based on Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA), Diffie-Hellman (DH), Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and so on are vulnerable to attacks by quantum computers. Although the gap between today’s quantum computers and the threats they pose to current public-key cryptography is large, the telecommunications landscape should begin planning for the transition to the post-quantum era as early as possible. In this paper, we examine recent advances in Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms from the perspective of the networking and telecommunications industries. The efforts are categorized at three levels, namely communication, computation (consisting of design, implementation and Public Key System (PKS)), and network. Some of the existing challenges and future recommendations for securing communication networks in the post-quantum era are also listed at the end of the paper.
The advent of quantum computing threatens to undermine current encryption methods significantly, especially those employed in mobile data transmission networks. Quantum algorithms can solve the computational challenges behind present public-key encryption methods like RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) and elliptic curve cryptography at a speedy rate. With mobile communication networks handling more and more sensitive information, the availability of secure authentication methods is increasingly important. This project proposes to investigate how mobile data communication systems can leverage post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) techniques to enhance authentication protocols. The research compares some NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography candidates, i.e., lattice-based, code-based, hash-based, and multivariate polynomial cryptography, focusing on their usage in mobile environments. We establish a guideline for constructing PQC-improved authentication protocols, focusing on their quantum-resistance, computational cost, and appropriateness for resource-constrained mobile devices. Our analysis proves that the regulations successfully protect information’s secrecy, integrity, and authenticity in the post-quantum era. This has led to the development of future-proof, safe, and resilient mobile communication networks. PQC augmented authentication systems offer good resistance against quantum attacks while supporting acceptable performance on mobile devices, as evidenced by previous research. Mobile communication systems can achieve long-term security through PQC, thus safeguarding user data and critical infrastructure against potential adversaries that might employ quantum computing in the future.