[HN Gopher] New 5G protocol vulnerabilities allow location tracking
___________________________________________________________________
New 5G protocol vulnerabilities allow location tracking
Author : DyslexicAtheist
Score : 206 points
Date : 2021-03-28 14:34 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (therecord.media)
(TXT) w3m dump (therecord.media)
| BigBalli wrote:
| bug or feature? The key benefit is enhanced tracking.
| nerbert wrote:
| Feature indeed. Highlighted from the beginning.
| bscvbscv wrote:
| Is true that 5G enables high precision, real-time tracking of all
| connected devices?
|
| Like, high-precision and real-time enough to kill anyone from a
| satellite/drone/missile/etc at any time with no additional
| effort?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Probably not. If they are not ready to flatten a city block to
| go after one device... The areas where they can pinpoint
| without getting data from device will still be tens or hundreds
| of meters in size...
| [deleted]
| SMAAART wrote:
| TIL: I do't need 5g on my next phone (to be acquired late 2021) I
| can wait till my next phone (2-3 years down the road).
| jmakov wrote:
| Sounds like by design.
| ng55QPSK wrote:
| 5G design is quite clean. But in real world networks an awful
| lot of backward compatible stuff is used.
| beckman466 wrote:
| Couldn't possibly be on purpose, right?
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-ci...
| hk1337 wrote:
| Well, it's intent is for IoT devices so that makes sense.
| datameta wrote:
| The 'S' in IoT stands for Security
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| "vulnerabilities"
| imglorp wrote:
| Why worry about an unknown group who MIGHT obtain your location
| when the location data is for sale by the carriers right now,
| along with browsing history, ad IDs etc etc. It's billions on the
| table, while their pet agency will fine them a tiny fraction of
| that, for a giant net profit. There's zero reasons for them to
| stop selling.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/technology/fcc-cellphones...
| Ovah wrote:
| The sale of location data by carriers is a USA specific
| phenomenon afaik.
| ng55QPSK wrote:
| At the moment.
| dtx1 wrote:
| No, in the EU it's a violation of your personal rights due
| to GDPR and in many EU Countries there are local laws that
| mirror this. This is very much an American failure to have
| democratic control over what large businesses do.
| elric wrote:
| Location data is being collected and sold by EU carriers.
| They just "anonymize" and/or aggregate the data before
| they sell it. And hey presto, it's suddenly "GDPR
| compliant". Of course we all know that no anonymized is
| ever really anonymous, and that aggregated data can be
| just as problematic.
|
| Couple of sources, in Dutch:
| https://tweakers.net/nieuws/118145/belgische-provider-
| proxim...
| https://itdaily.be/nieuws/infrastructuur/proximus-orange-
| en-...
| dtx1 wrote:
| thank you! I just found out i can opt out of this and
| did. However, selling anonymized data is better then
| selling non-anonymized data. Nevertheless, these carriers
| and the people who think this is in any way shape or form
| even remotely ok deserve to be stood in front of a
| wall...
| crb002 wrote:
| Wasn't that implicit? When you connect to a network down to a
| tower every few blocks you are broadcasting location.
| Ekaros wrote:
| This seems bit more special, but in general it is no different
| from your network admin being able to tell which WiFi station
| you are connected to at any time. And it's bit worse as WiFi
| generally doesn't use directional antennas...
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Not being an RF engineer, maybe I'm being naive. But surely any
| radio transmitter is trackable with some form of triangulation.
| Although the vulnerability maybe a little easier and the beam
| forming in 5G make triangulation a little harder.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| It's not just that. From the article:
|
| > This opens the door to situations where if an attacker
| manages to compromise an operator's edge network equipment,
| they could abuse 5G protocol functions to launch denial of
| service attacks against other network slices or extract
| information from adjacent 5G network slices, including customer
| data such as location tracking information.
| 2bitencryption wrote:
| 5G baffles me. I hear about it from politicians. I hear about it
| from telecom companies. I hear about it from my tech-illiterate
| dad, who asked me "Does it have 5G?" when I told him I got a new
| smartphone.
|
| But... what is it? Higher bandwidth? Lower latency? Is it the IoT
| dream, my smart microwave connects to a cell tower instead of my
| private subnet? Does it replace my wired home internet
| connection?
|
| And, bonus question - what's the theoretical bandwidth limit per
| person for, say, a football stadium full of people? Does this
| limit improve on 5G vs older specs? At what point does physics
| prevent us from having better standardized wireless networks?
| elil17 wrote:
| "5G" is a marketing umbrella term. It refers both to the next
| generation of LTE (Long Term Evolution, the incremental
| improvements that have been added to 4G) and also New Radio, a
| new cellular protocol which uses new portions of the radio
| spectrum.
|
| The features of 5G are higher bandwidth (especially in
| situations with high interference/poor reception), a higher
| density of users supported (up to 100k users/per square
| kilometer iirc), and better performance at high speeds (e.g. on
| bullet trains).
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| It added a whole bunch of different things. More efficient
| communication at existing frequencies and high speed
| communication at much higher frequencies are the main two.
|
| The Wikipedia page is pretty good.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| 5G is quickly getting a reputation for reduced battery life.
|
| Are there any technical mitigations coming? Or just heavier
| phones with bigger batteries?
| zaptrem wrote:
| LTE had that same reputation for a few years. They improved
| it then and I don't see why they wouldn't improve it now.
| ng55QPSK wrote:
| 5G is the improved LTE.
| DaftDank wrote:
| From what I understand, it's one of the things that will be key
| to enabling large numbers of self-driving cars on the roads.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| What is the specific technical reason that would be true?
| DaftDank wrote:
| Good question, I have no clue as I have nothing to do with
| 5G. From what I recall, it was something about how quickly
| the cars would be able to communicate with each other.
| Maybe this is just a very common misconception that is
| shared widely, but I know I've read it before in numerous
| places online.
|
| EDIT: Link to Verizon talking about it. It could all just
| be hype to make people want 5G and to get governments to
| invest in it, I don't know.
|
| "Today, internet-connected cars rely on 4G LTE technology
| to stream music and engage other connected services, but 5G
| will usher in a step change not only for in-car
| connectivity, but for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-
| to-infrastructure (V2I) communication.
|
| The implication is clear: Cars will not only "talk" with
| one another in near-real time, but also with sensors
| installed in streets and traffic lights, sharing
| information on roadways and weather conditions, and
| alerting drivers on the same stretch of highway to
| potential hazards. Connected vehicles will be able to
| crowdsource near-real-time routing information to avoid
| backups and streamline traffic flow. Next-generation
| networks should also lead to improvements in driver safety
| by helping mitigate the unknown--a truck, for example,
| sensing that its driver is about to run a red light and
| alerting other vehicles approaching the intersection of the
| hazard. The National Highway Safety Administration has
| concluded that the introduction of systems to prevent
| collisions at intersections alone could save 1,300 lives a
| year."
|
| https://www.verizon.com/about/news/how-5g-ultra-wideband-
| can...
| XCSme wrote:
| 5G is just capitalist marketing bs to give you a reason to buy
| new devices.
| gassius wrote:
| That's why capitalism has given humanity it's biggest leap in
| technology advances in under 200 years, marketing bs
|
| Edit: typo
| XCSme wrote:
| I am not sure what you are replying to. My point was that
| 5G is not that huge of a technological improvement as 3G
| was over 2G or 4G over 3G.
|
| The 4G speeds nowdays are fast enough that they are usually
| not the limiting factor in day-to-day usage of mobile
| internet. The advantages of 5G are not that big for the
| average mobile user, there are more drawbacks than
| advantages for using 5G, at least in the upcoming 5-10
| years.
|
| I said that it's capitalism marketing bs, because that's
| what it is: hyping the technology to more than it is for
| the sole purpose of increasing profits for telecom and
| hardware manufacturers.
| ng55QPSK wrote:
| Actually 5G is a big improvement on the system
| architecture. More and more of (dedicated) HW is moved to
| SW entities and virtualized computing (cloud stuff). This
| should bring down the investments for large deployments
| and coverage everywhere.
| XCSme wrote:
| > This should bring down the investments for large
| deployments and coverage everywhere
|
| Does this imply that in the near future 5G will have
| better coverage and will be cheaper than 4G?
| gassius wrote:
| My point is that you critic to 5G is not only
| ideologically charged, but lacking of fundamentals.
| Obviously you don't have enough information about 5G if
| you think the leap between 2G and 3G was more
| qualitative, but you decided that this is just a for
| profit extraction systematic of the capitalism system
| based on marketing without lacking added value.
|
| This critic could be made about almost all of the
| technological advances made possible by the capitalism
| system. Long live "marketing bs" that allows incremental
| improvements like this one
|
| Regards
| XCSme wrote:
| > incremental improvements
|
| Exactly, it is an incremental improvement that is
| marketed as a revolutionary one. When 4G and 3G came out
| they were simple stating that it is much faster, but now
| with 5G everywhere you see how it will revolutionize the
| world and make new things possible that were never
| possible before, like remote surgery, articles like this
| one: https://www.digi.com/blog/post/5g-and-the-future-of-
| telemedi...
|
| If you want lowest latency, use a wired connection which
| has existed for many years. Why would you use a more
| unreliable like 5G that might lose connection when
| someone waves his hand instead of a faster, more reliable
| wired one? There are tons of other examples like this.
|
| For the average user in most cases the download
| connection speed is actually limited at the server end,
| not at his end so even if he has 10GB/s download speed,
| it won't be able to use it. Not only that, but also data
| caps, storage write speed, infrastructure and other
| current limitations make the promoted benefits of 5G
| simply non-existing for at least several years.
|
| If you want a future-proof phone, yes you can get a 5G
| one, only that it's not future proof. Other components of
| the device must be drastically improved too before they
| can take advantage of 5G, which means that you would
| still have to change your device before you can actually
| use the promised benefits.
|
| I love technological advancements, but I hate it when the
| public is tricked into thinking something will greatly
| and instantly improve their life when it reality it won't
| change anything.
| anitil wrote:
| > like remote surgery
|
| This one annoys me so much. I've seen this exact promise
| every other year for 20 years. And it's never going to
| happen (outside of some PR stunts maybe).
| minitoar wrote:
| It's not just that, but certainly some firms have sort of
| turned it into that.
| XCSme wrote:
| Is there currently any real world use-case where 5G is
| being used by end-users for solutions that were not
| possible with 4G? As far as I know, for the average
| consumer that gets targeted by 5G ads, the benefits are
| marginal or non-existent.
| brightball wrote:
| My understanding of 5G has always been that it's just more
| short range nodes which should provide better service in
| densely populated areas.
|
| That's pretty much it. Some telecoms seem to be positioning
| this as an opportunity to provide home internet access running
| through 5G infrastructure which would cut down on last mile
| costs, but at the same time it seems like it would saturate the
| spectrum pretty quickly.
|
| During all the 5G hype I've been buying up stocks of companies
| based on how much backbone fiber they own, because as far as I
| can tell that's where the real staying power is anyway.
| xaduha wrote:
| I don't know about you, but occasionally some location services
| on my or my family phones say that we are in another city. I
| think that happens based on IP and that IP probably is in
| another city, latency comes from providers tunneling all that
| traffic to their centers first, probably for many legitimate
| reasons, not just on a whim. 5G is supposed to solve that, at
| least that's my understanding.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPRS_Tunnelling_Protocol
|
| https://techmonitor.ai/techonology/cybersecurity/gtp-protoco...
| Black101 wrote:
| 5G wasn't designed for the consumer... only the marketing was.
| david-cako wrote:
| 5G allows for more granular management of network capacity, so
| you could think of a stadium deployment as somewhere between
| existing LTE and a WiFi mesh network. The carriers can look at
| dashboards and maps, and figure out where people are getting
| slowdowns so they can put up some more 5G nodes.
|
| This granularity can mean more precise location data/telemetry
| and some interesting opportunities for edge caching and edge
| compute.
|
| Existing GPS, in my experience, is far from perfect for
| geocoding more dense areas, so the idea that 5G can reliably
| put you out in front of a restaurant, or even in a particular
| floor and room of a building is promising (and a bit scary).
|
| What if your games were streamed from a local edge node, and
| you only played with people on the same node at near-zero
| latency? Or maybe you're at a stadium, and your phone is
| streaming replays of the game directly from the stadium without
| going over the internet. And your phone knows exactly where the
| nearest vending machine is, and the vending machine is used as
| an edge device to give you live stock data and process the
| transaction.
|
| I think it's a good supplement to LTE. People are going crazy
| because it's not an in-your-face speed improvement, but the
| reality is that it can mature to keep dense urban areas
| connected in a way that LTE wasn't really designed for.
|
| In terms of it replacing WiFi/fixed line, I think one good
| reason it might is that it's simple. Down the line, some people
| might look at the process of "getting internet installed" and
| setting up a modem/access point as archaic, when you can just
| buy a device and have it connect. I kind of like having a
| separate fixed internet line though, because if one goes down
| for some reason, I still have the other.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I hear about it from politicians. I hear about it from telecom
| companies. I hear about it from my tech-illiterate dad, who
| asked me "Does it have 5G?" when I told him I got a new
| smartphone._
|
| Reminds me of when Bill Gates was on breakfast television
| flogging Intel's Pentium processor. My mom was suddenly of the
| opinion that all of my computer equipment was obsolete and that
| this one chip was going to solve all of the world's problems.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| My theory is that 5G will be like IPv6. Nobody wanted it,
| nobody understands it, it makes everything more difficult, and
| it will take ages to become the standard.
| est31 wrote:
| IPv6 makes a great deal of things more easy. It allows
| smaller routing tables for example. No more NAT makes p2p
| communication much easier. Yes, addresses are way harder to
| type now, and that's obviously annoying. But ip addresses
| weren't made to be typed manually, that's what DNS is for.
| user3939382 wrote:
| > ip addresses weren't made to be typed manually, that's
| what DNS is for.
|
| I've heard this a lot but it doesn't ring true. I believe
| I'm in a category with many others where your work involves
| configuring networks, especially LANs, and you are often
| entering IP addresses.
| Arnavion wrote:
| I feel this worry about having to type in /128s is
| overblown. The only times I've had to type a full /128
| when setting up my IPv6-only homelab was for adding DHCP
| static leases for my pet machines.
|
| If you're configuring LANs you're unlikely to be
| configuring anything deeper than a /64 per LAN, so the
| effort is approximately the same as IPv4 (four numbers,
| except that each number is four hex digits instead of
| three decimal digits).
|
| Similarly, if you're setting up IP rules on a firewall,
| you're unlikely to care about anything smaller than a
| /64. If you want to ban a bad actor, blocking a specific
| /128 isn't going to achieve anything, since the bad actor
| likely has the ability to use any address within the /64
| (SLAAC). You'd just ban the /64.
|
| Lastly, if you're picking your /128s like the static DHCP
| leases case I mentioned above, nothing prevents you from
| zeroing all the segments you don't care about. Each of my
| static leases has all zeroes in the lower /64 except for
| the last hex digit. Net result is 2001:db8:1234:1::1,
| 2001:db8:1234:2::1, 2001:db8:1234:3::1, etc. The
| 2001:db8:1234::/48 is what I get from my ISP so it's
| already in my muscle memory, so it's negligible extra
| effort to remember individual machines' IPs.
| colordrops wrote:
| The OP is probably talking about implementation rather than
| design, which to this day is very fragile and prone to
| breakage and misconfiguration, at least on consumer grade
| networks.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Implementation, design, and adoption. All in all, for the
| wonderful claims it's supporters make, adoption is the
| elephant in the room.
| philjohn wrote:
| And with certain ISP's being done with DS-Lite which is
| the worst possible solution at the moment. Sure, your
| core network is now IPV6, but everyone is going through
| CGNAT for the parts of the internet that are IPV4 only.
|
| It's one of the reasons I moved from Virgin Media (Cable
| in the UK) to Zen (FTTP) ... proper dual stack so I have
| native IPV4 AND IPV6.
| p1mrx wrote:
| > everyone is going through CGNAT for the parts of the
| internet that are IPV4 only.
|
| What choice do they have? There are more people than IPv4
| addresses, so if every ISP did dual-stack the price would
| go to infinity. IPv6+CGNAT is "free", and strictly more
| useful than CGNAT alone.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Nah, it will be taken into use. Just like 3G and 4G was.
| Though true visibility for end user when everyone is using it
| probably isn't that special.
| laurowyn wrote:
| 5G is the next generation of mobile connectivity. I can't list
| all of the detailed changes off the top of my head, but some of
| the biggest changes I'm aware of are;
|
| The use of a different radio band, therefore less contention in
| the existing mobile bands - less congestion results in better
| speeds overall.
|
| Reducing the range of base stations. shorter range means less
| clients, less congestion and therefore better speeds, whilst
| also deploying them more densely to cope with wider areas and
| higher bandwidth densities. Also, shorter range reduces the
| power requirements, meaning mobile devices will have longer
| battery life (nothing magical, probably not even noticeable to
| the average user), or it can be built into smaller/low power
| devices such as IoT.
|
| Utimately, 5G is irrelevant to end users until it's actually
| deployed widely. Just like 3G and 4G, the end user has no
| impact on the deployment of the network other than the demand
| for it. So, all the hype around 5G is almost entirely
| marketing, politics etc. It only really matters once 5G is
| deployed across the areas you visit daily, and until then the
| previous generations of mobile connectivity will continue to
| serve just fine.
|
| Your suggestion about a football stadium is an interesting test
| case. Ideally, an area that size would be served by up to a
| dozen base stations, spread throughout the stadium. Compare
| this with a single 3G base station that would cover the
| stadium, plus a large portion of the local area, and you can
| see the pros/cons fairly easily. But how many people are
| surfing the web whilst watching a game? or taking calls,
| answering texts etc. Very few during active play time, but
| there'll be large bursts of traffic in any breaks in play which
| will stress the older mobile generations to breaking point
| whereas 5G is designed to deal with that scenario fairly well.
| secondcoming wrote:
| All I know is that I get double the bandwidth when connected
| to a 5G network than their 4G one
| charrondev wrote:
| So now you can blow through your data cap twice as fast?
|
| To me the whole angle of this seems wrong. Who out there
| has a solid LTE signal and is going "oh if only this were
| faster".
|
| On the other hand when I have 1 bar I might has well have
| nothing at all. Shortening the range of the base stations
| doesn't seem like it would help this.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Data caps are a rarity in many countries.
| ng55QPSK wrote:
| But keep in mind, that data caps exist to limit the
| impact of single users to the overall capacity. With 5G
| capacity everywhere, the will look different (way
| higher).
| reaperducer wrote:
| That's what they said about 4G, and 3G. We've seen this
| movie before.
| ng55QPSK wrote:
| And your 4G cap is what you had with 3G?
| reaperducer wrote:
| When 4G came online, yes it was.
| serf wrote:
| >With 5G capacity everywhere, the will look different
| (way higher).
|
| In the US I went from unlimited data 3G to 10gb during
| the 4G LTE days, down to eventually 5gb (Verizon).
|
| There are many I know with the same personal experience.
|
| I have no doubt that big data plans will one day be
| ubiquitous -- but I have much more doubt that mobile
| providers are actually trying to provide me with a better
| experience and more freedom to do what I want.
|
| They care about profit, and that's about it.
|
| They gave away big data plans when few people cared about
| actually using them, and now that the phones and the
| userbase has caught up to those numbers the providers
| pull the rug from under them in order to secure further
| profits -- god forbid the user demand forces upgrades,
| that'd ruin the profits even further.
| sneak wrote:
| Me. I frequently have LTE in places I use the internet,
| and miss the gigabit connection I have at home.
|
| 10Gbps would, of course, be even better, at home and
| mobile.
| cj wrote:
| In what scenario can you tell the difference between 40
| Mbps and 1000 Mbps on a mobile phone?
|
| 20-40 Mbps is more than enough for streaming. So I
| suppose you're regularly downloading very large files or
| something?
|
| Genuinely curious what use cases you notice a difference.
|
| Or maybe it's the better latency of your gigabit that you
| notice more so than the throughput?
| sneak wrote:
| Oh, I don't use LTE on a mobile phone. All of my devices
| (phones included) connect to a router with LTE uplink
| that runs VPN 24/7; the mobile carriers can't be trusted
| with any unencrypted data any longer, as T-Mobile is
| happily publicizing. None of my phones get sim cards.
|
| I was referring to a laptop in my original statement. I
| usually plug it into the LTE router directly with a
| gigabit cable, or use Wi-Fi which generally exceeds the
| uplink capacity. 5G fixes that, for a wireless LAN.
|
| As for why you'd need higher bandwidth on a mobile
| device, it is simple: to live-stream the 2160p@60fps
| captured from the device's sensors. Another good reason
| is app updates: doing app updates on a mobile device
| frequently includes a few gigabytes of downloads. Same
| with laptops, of course, which are increasingly connected
| via mobile data. Many AAA games have updates in the
| 20-200GB range.
|
| A lot of this kind of stuff assumes that someone is on
| mobile temporarily until they get back to a "real" wifi
| connection (iOS didn't let you download any apps over 2GB
| on mobile data for a long while). For some of us, or all
| of us at some times, there isn't a "real" connection to
| go back to.
| ska wrote:
| > For some of us
|
| I suspect it's a small enough minority nobody is too
| worried about it from a policy point of view.
| sneak wrote:
| Long-haul truckers are 1% of the US population, which is
| something like 3 or 4 million people.
|
| I'm sure that number pales in comparison to the number of
| truckers, oil workers, and construction types globally
| that spend weeks or months on the road at a time. It's
| probably easily 100 million people that will immediately
| directly benefit from increased mobile bandwidth.
|
| That's not even counting the dozens of developing
| countries where they just skipped cabling altogether and
| mobile data is the only internet access available. That
| probably boops the figure up to a billion or more.
| ska wrote:
| Sure, and internationally I think it's a big deal. I'm
| certainly not going to argue that people wouldn't benefit
| from increased mobile bandwidth.
|
| However, huge chunk of those people you mention are
| nothing like mobile only, and for many the model of
| heavier downloads on wifi works just fine.
|
| My point was particularly about catering to the mobile
| only crowd, which is pretty small (US/ EU etc., anyway).
| secondcoming wrote:
| My SIM only contract has no data limit, for PS37pm. I
| have replaced fibre broadband with a 5G router. I've been
| using this set up since September and have hardly had any
| connectivity issues (vpn, ssh, video conferencing,
| netflix etc). Pings are a bit higher for gaming though.
| fulafel wrote:
| The radio frequencies aren't necessarily different, but there
| are options for frequencies that weren't available in lte.
|
| The jury is still out about real world mm-wave 5g becoming
| widespread any time soon outside few exceptionally crowded
| public places. Besides network support, a lot of phones don't
| support it either.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| 5G is for integrating very low-cost ICs into every "smart"
| device, TV, car, etc. to track you without you noticing.
| skeeks wrote:
| No, that's what 5G enables but 5G itself is something else.
| [deleted]
| rocqua wrote:
| Generally there is said to be 3 parts to 5G.
|
| The first is eMBB: Enhanced Mobile Broadband. In other words
| faster mobile internet. This is where most operators start.
|
| The second is URLLC: Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communications.
| This is mainly aimed at using 5G for things like self-driving
| cars. But also things like long distance remote control. This
| is where people see potential for innovation without being
| clear what the exact innovation will be.
|
| The third is mMTC: Massive Machine Type Communications. This is
| meant for IOT but also for factory control. The IOT thing is
| mostly allowing extra low battery useage, low speed, cheap
| connnectivity. The factory control thing is about getting the
| advantages of 5G (and e.g. URLLC) and allowing a factory to
| quickly set up their own private 5G network.
|
| This is on the consumer facing side. On the operator facing
| side, infrastructure is moving more towards virtualization and
| decoupling. Trying to make it easier to use multiple vendors,
| and stop requiring custom made hardware. And in general, moving
| towards commodity hardware and something closer to
| 'infrastructure as code'.
|
| This also helps roaming and virtual operators (for e.g. the
| factory control). It also helps a bit with the ultra low
| latency part by decentralizing the routing part and moving it
| closer to the devices.
|
| So "what is 5G gonna do for me" is mostly the 'faster
| internet'. But the idea is that it will enable widespread
| innovation that you can later use. With some luck (governments
| are thinking) being ahead in deploying 5G might also help boost
| your economy by boosting innovation.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's three things. It helps push out legacy 3G tech that
| reduces throughput, it enables cellular carriers to displace
| cable companies without running fiber with mmWave, and it is
| enabling stuff like smart roads that made it a national
| security issue.
|
| Telematics in cars will be mandated shortly and enable stuff
| like road vs fuel taxation and congestion pricing. That enabled
| regulatory changes that basically eliminated most local
| autonomy over cellular tower placement. Basically, the FCC is
| "yimby" for anything 5G, and used national security regulations
| to limit permitting, taxation, etc.
| topranks wrote:
| That's the bit that doesn't make sense.
|
| They can't really avoid running fibre with mmWave cos they
| have to backhaul it. Sure there is point to point radio, but
| in the main they'll need to get fibre almost as close to you
| as with a fixed line direct to you. But instead it'll be
| fibre to base stations on top of every building? It's almost
| the same cost in terms of fibre infra.
| splithalf wrote:
| Cost savings for carriers and more precise tracking of users
| for marketing and other purposes.
| Shelnutt2 wrote:
| My previous job was working for $major_telco in the US, I was
| in network (not RF engineering). I left right as the "5G" train
| was starting, however I did get training and have pretty decent
| familiarity with the implementation plan and 3GPP release 15,
| the first release with the official New Radio (NR) spec. I also
| have a large understanding of LTE (3GPP release 10-14), so I'm
| happy to dive as deep as anyone would like.
|
| For the details below I'm going to not use the term "5G", 5G
| like 4G is marketing. The technical specifications that more or
| less make up "5G" are the 3GPP standards releases[1]. The 3GPP
| is the standards body that ratifies the wireless network
| standards that nearly the entire world uses. For this
| discussion I'll ignore alternatives since "5G" effectively
| means the 3GPP standard.
|
| The standard of 3GPP Release 15 (and newer) are improvements
| and build off the existing standards of LTE (releases 8-14).
| Its an evolution of the standard, much like 3GPP Release 8
| (first LTE release) was an evolution on Release 5-7 (HSDPA-
| HSDPA+). While release 15+ are evolutionary, they are not
| revolutionary in that there is no magically discovered new
| physics behind it. The improvements largely lie with increased
| support for higher modulation levels (256 QAM was introduced
| with Release 14 LTE-Advanced), increased spectrum efficiency
| (variable sized framing allowed across difference devices and
| upload/download), mixing upload/download division types (i.e.
| using TDD[2] for download and FDD[2] for upload), improved MIMO
| (up to 64x64 in massive MIMO), improved beam-forming and
| additional frequencies.
|
| Some of these improvements in Release 15+ were available in
| Release 14 or unofficially rolled out in release 14 + NR draft.
| I know one carrier that was pushing 64x64 MIMO for TDD LTE.
|
| The new frequencies, many in the "millimeter wave" range, will
| help with with congestion in the "football stadium". There are
| two main limitations in high capacity events, the first is
| backhaul. Have to connect the stadium back to the core, and
| this is _always_ a bottleneck. The second limitation is
| available spectrum. No matter how many antennas you have in the
| DAS, there is a physical limitation to the amount of data that
| can be sent over the frequencies. The new millimeter wave help
| here, because while its very short range, its large width
| allows for a significantly higher number of concurrent
| connections.
|
| The new frequencies, along with increased efficiency in
| existing frequencies, plus core changes are the main driver for
| the "latency" and "bandwidth" improvements. The "connected
| cars" and "connected IoT to cell network" are just
| marketing/sales departments pushing for new customers. The main
| "advantage" "5G" brings here is an increased capacity in the
| network to handle this.
|
| A few other notes, unlike "3G"->LTE, the upgrade to Release 15+
| for carriers will be a lot smoother. First, everyone is now on
| LTE, aka the precursor so there is no CDMA/EVDO networks that
| are incompatible that need rip and replace + compatibility
| modes (ehrpd). Second "NR" is designed to be compatible and
| multiplexable with existing LTE/LTE-Advanced enodebs, this
| means in one area you can have NR and LTE towers, and the NR
| towers can broadcast LTE for devices that are LTE only. This
| was not the case with the original eNodeBs, which could not
| handle backwards compatibility without physically separate
| BTS/nodeBs. Third, the new core for release 15 is designed with
| backwards compatibility with existing enodeb's. Unlike the
| previous transition which required a new core that was largely
| incompatible due to major design changes. So with "NR" RAN
| elements and existing LTE enodeb's the core can be seamlessly
| upgraded without having to run two complete networks for
| multiple years like in the LTE transition.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP#Standards
|
| [2] TDD-> Time Division Duplex, FDD -> Frequency division
| duplex. Most LTE networks are FDD, a few (i.e. Sprint,
| Softbank, China mobile..) have certain spectrum they use as
| TDD. The difference is with TDD, you use the same exact
| frequencies for upload and download but you divide the by time.
| So basically t0->t2 is for download, t3->t4 is upload, etc.
| With FDD the frequency or "band" is divided into to two parts,
| one for upload and one for download. There is no time division
| for FDD but you lose of the size of the channel.
| mh- wrote:
| This is the best writeup I've seen on the topic. Thank you
| for taking the time.
| lukec11 wrote:
| 5G can be many things, but it isn't gigabit wireless speeds, or
| low latency, or smart microwaves. It can _enable_ those
| technologies, but what it really is is a telecommunications
| standard, telling companies _how_ to build out networks.
|
| 5G uses the same radio waves that 4G has, in many cases -
| T-Mobile US, for example, uses 600MHz and 2.5GHZ frequencies
| for 5G (and 4G). Sprint has been using 2.5GHz for 4G since
| 2008.
|
| The biggest change that 5G could bring today honestly is
| capacity - if you've ever tried to use LTE in a busy train
| station, you can tell the impact that congestion has on that
| network's subscribers. Thousands of people connected to a few
| cells leads to significant slowdown. Generally, higher
| frequencies lead to shorter range and higher throughput, so in
| specific circumstances like Airports[0] with multiple antennas,
| 5G can allow for much higher throughput to many devices at
| once, alleviating congestion.
|
| 5G can also more efficiently make use of spectrum, which means
| 5G networks can reach further than 4G networks built on the
| same frequency.
|
| There's a lot more to this, and I'd recommend reading into the
| Wikipedia page[1] on 5G for an in-depth look if you have time -
| but the basics are, 5G is a standard, not any one set of
| devices or antennas or expectations.
|
| [0] https://news.tampaairport.com/tpa-welcomes-5g-and-
| enhanced-4... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G
| reaperducer wrote:
| _5G can also more efficiently make use of spectrum, which
| means 5G networks can reach further than 4G networks built on
| the same frequency._
|
| This part I don't understand. I spend a lot of time on
| business and pleasure in places where cellular coverage is
| unavailable or unreliable. I thought that 5G signals don't go
| as far as 4G, so how can they reach "further" into towns and
| places that don't have cellular service?
|
| (FWIW, there are a number of places in my regular [pre-
| pandemic] travels where the 3G signal is better and even
| faster than 4G signals.)
| toast0 wrote:
| 5G is several parts. The high frequency, hugh bandwidth
| stuff doesn't go far.
|
| The same as existing mobile frequency stuff has about the
| same penetration as existing service, but because its more
| efficient, it allows towers to increase power to expand
| their coverage area. Generally towers will modulate their
| output power to reduce coverage when congested, hoping
| devices will attach to other towers; works well when
| there's enough towers with overlapping coverage, but not as
| well when towers are sparse.
|
| It doesn't have to be purely power either, antenna angle
| makes a big difference, and phased antennas mean you can
| change effective angle without mechanically changing the
| angle.
| pottertheotter wrote:
| The thing that is confusing is two things are wrapped up
| together as "5G": (a) the actual 5G standards, and (b) the
| spectrum that is used. To add to the confusion, (b) is
| composed of frequency and bandwidth, and those are often
| different both between and within countries.
|
| For instance, one of the biggest benefits of 5G is that
| channels (bandwidth) can be much wider, and several can be
| stacked together, which means more data can be transferred.
| But even though that can be done, there may not be enough
| spectrum at a specific frequency to be able to take
| advantage of that.
|
| Then the high-band (millimeter wave) can have even more
| channels than the low- and mid-band 5G. But high-band
| doesn't travel far and it doesn't penetrate walls well.
|
| If you want a good primer on it that is accessible, I
| recommend the regularly updated "What Is 5G?" article from
| Sascha Segan at PCMag.[1] I think he's the best journalist
| writing about 5G.
|
| [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/what-is-5g
| enkrs wrote:
| True, millimeter wave bands, introduced in 5G, don't go as
| far as 4G. But those bands are in the 5G standard
| _additionally_ to the lower bands similar to 4G, and are
| beneficial in places like busy airports, train stations and
| urban areas. 5G does not mandate to only use the millimeter
| wave bands (or, for the mater of act, to use them at all).
|
| So in rural areas 5G signals would still use frequencies
| similar to 4G,so the more efficient use of spectrum will
| improve coverage and speed.
|
| Regarding the observation that sometimes 3G signals are
| better than 4G - that might as well be because 4G has
| problems with congestion when many clients are connected to
| the same base station. One of areas which also 5G is also
| improving.
| zaptrem wrote:
| 5G is just instructions on how devices should talk over
| radio waves. The waves the devices decide to talk over very
| dramatically. On the short-range end, they can talk on
| 30-60ghz bands; these bands have lots of room to talk, but
| they're hard to hear, especially through walls or long
| distances. On the other end, they can talk on frequencies
| as low as <600mhz. These are great at penetrating barriers
| (they're probably what you use in the middle of nowhere)
| but there's less room (free spectrum real estate available)
| to talk.
| lukec11 wrote:
| There's a common misconception that 5G specifically means
| you need to use millimeter wave (very high-band) networks.
| 5G can be on the same frequency as 4G, and it is more
| efficient than 4G - so with greater efficiency, it's easier
| to get usable output from that signal than with 4G. The
| signals will go "as far" regardless of 3G/4G/5G assuming
| they're broadcasted at the same frequency and power level,
| but the device being able to use it is a different story.
|
| The reason 2G and 3G can sometimes reach further than LTE
| is for a similar reason - because it's easier to "hang
| onto" a 2/3G signal. The reason it's easier though is
| different - not because 3G is more efficient, but because
| it's less complex. This reddit thread[0] explains it better
| than I can, so I'll paste a comment from it here:
|
| >>> The modulation scheme (how the digital "data" is packed
| into the "analog" wave to transmit it over the air) is
| simpler for [2G], which requires a lower wave quality to
| decode. It's the same reason you are more likely to get an
| [2G] signal farther away than LTE
|
| Note that the reason 3G might be "faster" is probably due
| more to the congestion issue I talked about before - when
| the LTE network is oversubscribed, meaning too many people
| are connected to it and are slowing it down, sometimes
| dropping back to 3G (which very few people are connected to
| in 2021) can lead to you fighting less over your data.
|
| [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/lwwkrl/when_w
| as_th...
| kodah wrote:
| I don't know if this feature got dropped or if it's just not
| very well covered, but...
|
| There's a feature that allows devices to go into a low power
| mode. The tower can then "wake up" a device remotely. It's
| designed for a variety of IOT usecases.
| maffydub wrote:
| Going into low-power mode and then being woken up by the
| tower is standard function (even of 4G) - it's called
| paging, and pretty much all devices support it.
|
| Unfortunately, although listening for these paging messages
| requires less power than having a full connection, it's
| still non-zero.
|
| For really lower-power applications, 5G (and I think some
| of the later 4G extensions) support Mobile-Initiated
| Connection Only, which essentially means the device goes
| into low-power mode but doesn't even listen for paging
| messages - instead, it wakes up occasionally (maybe even
| just once a day) and sends and receives messages. The tower
| knows to not even bother trying to page it.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Busy train stations should have DAS antennas to support the
| high density of devices.
| zamadatix wrote:
| A multicarrier DAS is $5-$10 per square foot up front and
| expensive to maintain - these costs typically do not fall
| on the carrier but deals can be struck depending on volume.
| 5G looks to minimize the number of locations that need a
| DAS in the first place so the places that couldn't get a
| deal don't need one and the ones that could can be covered
| cheaper by the carrier than the deal would have been for
| the carrier. Solutions like Wi-Fi Passpoint look to provide
| a far cheaper alternative (and avoid things like single
| carrier DAS which is cheaper but only fixes the problem for
| some) for cases density is sky high (like stadiums) or the
| location not otherwise coverable.
|
| A DAS can certainly be an answer but it's never been a very
| attractive one, and that's from when there weren't other
| options on the horizon.
| fnord77 wrote:
| I think it is more oriented towards saving money and stuffing
| more subscribers onto the infrastructure. So, it's about money.
| umvi wrote:
| It's simple. 5G is a marketing term to get you to buy stuff.
| It's 4G + 1, therefore it's better. There may be marginal
| technological improvements too. See: Veritasium's latest video
| about planned obsolescence
| saltminer wrote:
| Given how US carriers tend to rebrand stuff (see: Verizon's
| "4G LTE" in my hometown is/was HSPA+, a 3G technology), this
| is my view on it. "5G" will likely be real 4G outside larger
| cities.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G
| knorker wrote:
| The mobile phone industry has failed security and privacy with
| every single technology for over 40 years.
|
| Every single layer, and every single generation, is broken.
|
| Example: The encryption has been home-grown in every generation,
| and every generation has been broken. They keep reinventing their
| own shit, even though EVERYONE knows you DO NOT DO THAT.
|
| Another example: The backbone of cross-operator traffic has ZERO
| authentication. If you're lucky it has ACLs on IP addresses. (and
| if you thought BGP hijacking on _the internet_ was lax and
| unmonitored...)
|
| Another: The GTP protocol on this network has a "high security"
| mode, where it only allows clients who set the "yes, I'm
| authenticated" bit in the header. Yes, really. A bit.
|
| And operationally like half the nodes in phone networks have a
| password of "letmein", "password", or "Secret" (capital 's', very
| high security).
|
| I've seen companies accidentally log in to their competitors
| nodes, because the both used "letmein" as password!
|
| There is NO POSSIBLE WAY anyone can be this incompetent. I give
| the benefit of doubt, but we're approaching half a century of
| EVERY SINGLE THING, standards, implementation, policies, and
| operations, being completely broken. At what point can we say for
| certain that this is malice, this is deliberate backdooring of
| all phone infrastructure?
| elric wrote:
| I've wondered about this as well. There is an "innocent"
| explanation, aside from incompetence: there's layers upon
| layers of stuff, designed, owned and managed by a plethora of
| organizations. If no one organization is liable, they're not
| likely to be proactive about security.
|
| The cynic in me, of course, suspects this is no accident.
| knorker wrote:
| I'd agree, but that doesn't explain why not only is the big
| picture absolutely broken, but so is every single detail. The
| indivisible parts are also broken.
| creato wrote:
| I don't see why we should even be trying to make base level
| protocols like this "secure". Focus on reliability and
| simplicity, leave security to another level of the stack. VOIP
| and web browsing services should be encrypted, who cares
| whether the low level protocol is encrypted or not?
|
| Anything that needs to be standardized and stable for decades
| needs to be simple, and it shouldn't matter whether there are
| vulnerabilities, because those are inevitable.
| knorker wrote:
| Some things can't be done on the top level. E.g. anti-
| tracking and metering.
|
| Also because airtime is a scarce resource it's not as simple
| as "just give me a lower layer and I'll run VOIP". The
| requirements (and performance and reliability) of voice calls
| is higher than skype over an IP network on mobile.
|
| E.g. there's a reason SCTP is actually used here. Phone
| networks are in some ways rightly very different from pure
| packet Internet. Sometimes just for historical reasons from
| the olden times, but often also justifiably so.
|
| I could go on and on, but tl;dr: it's not that simple, but
| you're also not wrong.
| Jonnax wrote:
| The other side of this is that mobile networks are national
| infrastructure.
|
| The concept of "lawful intercept" is baked into the networks
| from a fundamental standpoint.
|
| This might be a reason why there's less care about these
| things.
| rocqua wrote:
| The mobile interop is really good, that is because
| standardization is done rather well technologically and
| widely followed. This also means that standardization is
| fought over harshly.
|
| Anything that gets standardized will see wide use. What if
| the standardization picks a technology you are a market
| leader in? What if the standardization picks a technology you
| have a patent on? Yeah, you will be forced to let people
| license the patent. But you will be getting licensing fees.
| knorker wrote:
| But this is not the way LI systems work. They have a "front
| door".
|
| At least for police powers. For intelligence agencies, sure.
| Jonnax wrote:
| Indeed. My point was more that due to things like LI. It
| might influence an attitude towards security of "it doesn't
| really matter" when it comes to properly implementing
| secure controls
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| That is correct. It is the same reason why fax machines are
| considered secure transmission for medical data. National
| infrastructure is harder to compromise at scale compared to
| internet channels.
| teawrecks wrote:
| What you're saying might be true, I have no idea, but then why
| don't we see more rampant vandalism from randos (ex. War
| Games)? It seems like in this day and age it wouldn't take any
| time for someone to brute force any of these nodes and cause a
| ruckus.
| mikehotel wrote:
| A combination of factors like vilification of hacking,
| corporate PR managing embarrassing incidents and responsible
| disclosure can cause most of this activity to be under-
| reported.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| IMSI-catchers are in wide use by local law enforcement in
| much of North America[1], no warrant needed and law
| enforcement can do whatever it is they like with them with no
| oversight, too, except use them to present evidence in court
| without a warrant.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
| xvector wrote:
| These networks are almost certainly compromised to high hell,
| except the actors don't broadcast their action.
| grenoire wrote:
| Because the 'randos' know very well that they cannot surface
| with any of their actions. Even the _white hats_ are getting
| regularly punished for their disclosures, what makes you
| think someone making a living off of exploits would come
| clean?*
|
| * Academic researchers excl.
| knorker wrote:
| What, like SS7 phone hijacks and fake base stations tracking,
| and such, that happen all the time?
|
| > it wouldn't take any time for someone to brute force any of
| these nodes and cause a ruckus.
|
| 1) Who says it doesn't happen? 2) Generally these things
| aren't on "the internet". They're behind firewalls and on
| this "other internet" I mentioned between the operators. You
| can legit buy access to this network for a few thousand
| dollars, sure. But if you're that serious you're probably not
| a rando after "rampant vandalism".
| varispeed wrote:
| Can you have a separate device that will send fake location data
| to your phone? Has anyone built something like this? Basically
| something that will pretend to be a GPS satellite and fake wifi
| network generator, so that device won't be able to pick up actual
| networks around it, but only those programmed ones?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-28 23:00 UTC)