The rapid growth of 5G wireless technology has transformed connectivity, offering exceptional bandwidth, ultralow latency, and massive IoT device connectivity.However, as quantum computers are progressing, resistance against attacks from such computers becomes a mandatory requirement for all critical infrastructure, necessitating efficient post-quantum cryptography (PQC) implementations for 5G-based IoT devices with limited resources.For instance, User Equipment (UE) reauthentication due to frequent handovers and mobility events is a daily operation that already comes with some overhead, which is not attractive to be used for IoT UE devices.Incorporating heavier PQ solutions into these re-authentications will lead to even more additional communication and computation overhead that may hinder PQ deployment in next generation networks.As such, this paper introduces a novel, lightweight approach for integrating PQC in 5G IoT authentication by proposing a custom identity-based session resumption mechanism without compromising interoperability with existing protocols.This approach prevents replay attacks and ensures perfect forward secrecy (PFS) by utilizing customized identities that are dynamically generated based on device-specific parameters, combined with intelligent server-side caching of quantum-resistant cryptographic materials that eliminate the need for full PQC computations during subsequent re-authentications.We demonstrate through realistic 5G experimentation that the proposed solution significantly lowers authentication overhead while providing quantumresistant security.
The rapid growth of 5G wireless technology has transformed connectivity, offering exceptional bandwidth, ultralow latency, and massive IoT device connectivity.However, as quantum computers are progressing, resistance against attacks from such computers becomes a mandatory requirement for all critical infrastructure, necessitating efficient post-quantum cryptography (PQC) implementations for 5G-based IoT devices with limited resources.For instance, User Equipment (UE) reauthentication due to frequent handovers and mobility events is a daily operation that already comes with some overhead, which is not attractive to be used for IoT UE devices.Incorporating heavier PQ solutions into these re-authentications will lead to even more additional communication and computation overhead that may hinder PQ deployment in next generation networks.As such, this paper introduces a novel, lightweight approach for integrating PQC in 5G IoT authentication by proposing a custom identity-based session resumption mechanism without compromising interoperability with existing protocols.This approach prevents replay attacks and ensures perfect forward secrecy (PFS) by utilizing customized identities that are dynamically generated based on device-specific parameters, combined with intelligent server-side caching of quantum-resistant cryptographic materials that eliminate the need for full PQC computations during subsequent re-authentications.We demonstrate through realistic 5G experimentation that the proposed solution significantly lowers authentication overhead while providing quantumresistant security.
The emergence of quantum computing is expected to break many conventional cryptographic algorithms currently used for authentication and secure communication. Existing security mechanisms in Next Generation Networks (NGNs), including 5G, IoT, smart healthcare, and cloud-based systems, are increasingly vulnerable to future quantum attacks. This research presents a lightweight and efficient Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) based authentication framework specifically designed for next generation network environments. The proposed framework combines quantum-resistant cryptographic techniques with optimized authentication procedures to provide secure identity verification, confidential communication, and attack resistance with minimal computational complexity. The model emphasizes reduced overhead, faster authentication response, and scalability for resource-constrained devices. Security analysis shows that the framework can effectively defend against replay attacks, impersonation attacks, session hijacking, and quantum-based cryptanalytic threats. Experimental evaluation indicates that the proposed approach achieves improved security performance while maintaining low latency and reduced resource consumption, making it suitable for practical deployment in future intelligent communication networks.
Significant performance improvements in bandwidth and latency make 5G a suitable candidate for a wide range of applications, particularly those requiring real-time communication, such as Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and autonomous vehicles. However, today’s security, including modern cryptographic systems, is prone to different attacks caused by the high computational power of quantum computing, highlighting the need for integrating quantum-resistant security measures. To accommodate attacks targeted at 5G networks, there are efforts to move towards TLS-based security, which is the widely accepted standard across networks. However, integrating post-quantum algorithms must also be considered in such a transition. Thus, this paper is the first to perform the integration of Post-quantum TLS (PQ-TLS) protocols into 5G networks and offer a realistic performance evaluation. Our approach focuses on integrating PQ-TLS into the 5G control plane (CP) without requiring a major overhaul, thus ensuring communications’ interoperability even with legacy components of 5G, which may not support TLS. Specifically, we have updated the registration and authentication protocols for both core network functions and user equipment (UE) by implementing a TLS tunneling approach through virtualization. We then evaluate the performance and feasibility of PQ-TLS in enhancing the security of 5G communications on an actual testbed. Our results demonstrate that while PQ algorithms introduce some overhead, they remain viable for 5G applications, particularly for protocols that can run on the core network.
Next-generation communication technologies such as fifth-generation (5G) wireless telecommunications systems enable the expansion of digital connectivity across commercial, industrial, and national infrastructure; as a result, an explosive increase in the use of the Internet of Things (IoT). In these highly distributed, autonomous environments, secure, scalable, and interoperable identity management systems are needed to provide authentication, authorization, and access control (AAA) for billions of devices and users. Centralized identity management frameworks have critical vulnerabilities due to their reliance on centralized architectures and traditional cryptographic algorithms. Vulnerabilities include susceptibility to quantum attacks, single points of failure, and cross-domain interoperability issues. Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) provides quantum-resilient security and Identity Mesh Architectures (IMAs) create decentralized and distributed identity management frameworks that support autonomous and cross-domain deployments. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of PQC-IMAs through an examination of PQC, the IMA, security implications, deployment challenges, and future research directions. PQC-IMA integration allows for the creation of identity management systems that remain secure, resilient, and fault-tolerant when deployed in nationwide, large-scale 5G telecommunications networks and IoT systems. The solutions described in this paper can meet the challenges posed by the emerging Quantum Era and achieve operational efficiencies in connection ecosystems that are growing more and more complex and interconnected.
Trustworthiness, privacy and resilience are expected to be essential requirements of 6G on top of various other conventional performance requirements such as data rate and latency. Primary authentication is a key procedure for initiating secure communication between User Equipment (UE) and Home Network (HN) in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). However, primary authentication mechanisms used in 5G are vulnerable against quantum machines, replay attacks, and rouge base-station. To protect against these threats, we propose beyond 5G and 6G primary authentication methods to adapt hybrid mechanisms which combines Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) and existing asymmetric algorithm with Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) guarantee. We evaluate proposed methods using our in-house developed Simulator “WirelessPQCSim.” Our proposed Hybrid mechanisms provide enhanced security without additional CPU overhead with respect to exiting 5G system. We also achieved up to 6.7x speed-up for PQC-based methods with respect to 5G system and provide low latency which is one of the KPI for 6G system.
The rapid proliferation of IoT technology has brought billions of devices into play that need to operate in a variety of diverse, resource-constrained environments. Secure authentication among these devices is a critical challenge, as traditional certificate-based public key infrastructures incur heavy computation and management overhead. Moreover, recent breakthroughs in quantum computing put at risk the security of classical cryptographic algorithms commonly used in IoT systems. This paper proposes a post-quantum certificateless authentication framework designed to address the efficiency-long-term security requirements of IoT environments. The proposed framework uses lattice-based cryptography to resist quantum-enabled adversaries while eliminating the need for digital certificates. The certificateless approach evades the problem of key escrow of identity-based cryptography and simplifies the key management process. A lightweight authentication protocol, which is suitable for constrained IoT devices, is developed. Security analyses prove that our proposed framework resists common attacks such as impersonation, replay, and man-in-the-middle attacks. The performance evaluation shows that our proposed framework reduces the communication and computational overheads compared with the traditional certificatebased authentication schemes. In this way, it is appropriate for large-scale and futureproof deployments of IoT systems.
The rapid expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems has introduced significant security challenges due to resource-constrained devices, heterogeneous network architectures, and largescale connectivity. Traditional authentication and key exchange mechanisms, primarily based on classical cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and ECC, are vulnerable to future quantum computing attacks. The emergence of quantum algorithms, particularly Shor’s algorithm, threatens the long-term confidentiality and integrity of IoT communications. This paper proposes a Quantum-Resistant Authentication and Key Exchange Protocol specifically designed for secure IoT architectures. The proposed framework integrates post-quantum cryptographic primitives, including lattice-based key exchange mechanisms and hash-based authentication schemes, optimized for low computational overhead suitable for constrained IoT devices. The protocol ensures mutual authentication, forward secrecy, and resistance against quantum adversaries while maintaining minimal communication latency. Security analysis demonstrates robustness against replay, man-in-the-middle, and key-compromise attacks. Performance evaluation shows that the proposed solution achieves a balance between quantum security strength and resource efficiency, making it suitable for next-generation IoT deployments in smart cities, healthcare systems, and industrial automation.