The mobile security sector has uncovered numerous vulnerabilities within link and session-establishment protocols. These vulnerabilities can be exploited using software-defined radios (SDRs) to interfere with, impersonate, or flood layer-3 (L3) messages, compromising security and privacy. These risks persist even within the latest 5G mobile network standard. With affordable SDRs and open-source cellular software stacks readily accessible, the economic and technical obstacles to practical cellular attacks are relatively minimal. In this work, we would like to investigate the resource depletion and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, that are well known in LTE [1], within 5G RAN. The main focus will be regarding the RRC and NAS protocol vulnerabilities that are mentioned in [1]. The expected results would be to recreate these attacks experimentally in our 5G RAN with srsRAN [2]. If time allows, further tests can be performed over campus network with commercial 5G RAN.

[1] H. Kim, J. Lee, E. Lee and Y. Kim, "Touching the Untouchables: Dynamic Security Analysis of the LTE Control Plane," 2019 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP), San Francisco, CA, USA, 2019, pp. 1153-1168, doi: 10.1109/SP.2019.00038.

[2] I. Gomez-Miguelez et al., “Srslte: An open-source platform for lte evolution and experimentation,” in Proc. of ACM WiNTECH, 2016.

- C/C++ experience

- SDR experience is a plus

- 5G knowledge is a plus

Tasks:

Implementation of live camera streams for the research project 6G-life. In addition, a web server for a GUI is to be set up in which, among other things, the camera streams are integrated

Please note that while this work is closely related to my work, this position is from our project partners at MITI (https://web.med.tum.de/en/miti/home/).

• Motivation and independent way of working
• Interest in medicine and application-oriented research
• Experience in web server development
• Ideally knowledge of camera transmission technology and GUI programming

Development of a performance test framework for srsRAN and evaluating the performance using this tool.

The goal of this thesis is to evaluate weaknesses of the protocol implementation in commercial smart phones and design attacks correspondingly.

In future communication systems such as 6G, in-network computing will play a crucial role. In particular, processing units within the network enable to run applications such as digital twins close to the end user, leading to lower latencies and overall better performance. However, these processing resources are usually shared among many applications, which potentially leads to worse performance in terms of execution time, throughput, etc. . This is especially critical for applications such as autonomous driving, telemedicine or smart operations. Hence, the processing of more critical applications must be prioritized.

In this thesis, the task is to develop and evaluate a priorization approach for applications. However, not only technical aspects will play a role for the priorization, but also ethical, i.e. in this case medical aspects. This is especially important, if applications are equally critical. For this, suitable real use cases are identified together with our partners at MITI (Hospital "Rechts der Isar"). The priorization approach then leads to a specified distribution of the processing and networking resources, satisfying the minimum needs of critical applications.

The result will be an evaluated priorization approach for applications in the medical environment.

Motivation, basic networking knowledge, basic programming knowledge

The next generation of communication networks, namely 6G, will enable a huge variety of medical applications. In the current phase, our research focuses on optimizing the interaction between network and medical application developing. For this, we joined forces with the Minimally Invasive Interdisciplinary Therapeutical Intervention (MITI) group, sitting at the hospital "Rechts der Isar".

This research internship focuses on one certain use case, the mobile patient monitoring of patiens in the operation room. In particular, the vital parameters of the patient are continously measured and sent to a server. The task of the research internship is to develop and implement the communication protocol between the sensors and the processing server. Hereby, a basic implementation is already given. However, key components are still missing, which should be implemented and evaluated within the scope of this research internship.

Please note, that the real setup is located at MITI. You may have to work there.

• Motivation
• Knowledge about Python and Linux
• Basic communication (protocol) principles

As a new and future mobile communications standard, 6G is intended to focus on people. In addition to very low latencies and high data transmission rates, the network will be more reliable, secure and dynamic. These features are particularly in demand in medicine and medical device technology to develop intelligent value-added functions for patients and clinical staff. As part of the BMBF-funded joint project "6G-life", a demonstrator will be developed that uses and requires these network properties to enable new intelligent assistance functions.

The aim of this research practice is the further development of a system for the environment-aware measurement of vital parameters. For this purpose, a detailed literature research on the possibilities of biosignal processing and data transmission protocols in the medical field will be conducted. Subsequently, an already existing measurement setup is to be further developed, which records vital parameters by means of suitable sensors (ECG, temperature, SpO2, blood pressure, ...). A message architecture is to be designed that allows secure and controllable transmission of the sensor data to computing units located in the network for biosignal processing. The results of the signal processing are to be displayed on an already existing GUI.

This Research Internship is in cooperation with the MITI research group. Most work may be done at their site.

• Motivation and independent working style
• Knowledge in communication networks and signal processing
• Knowledge in Python
• Knowledge in C++ if possible

Future medical applications put stringent requirements on the underlying communication networks in terms of highest availability, maximal throughput, minimal latency, etc. Thus, in the context of the 6G-life project, new networking concepts and solutions are being developed.

For the research of using 6G for medical applications, the communication and the medical side have joined forces: While researchers from the MITI group (Minimally invasive Interdisciplinary Therapeutical Intervention), located at the hospital "Rechts der Isar", focus on the requirements of the medical applications and collecting needed parameters of patients, it is the task of the researchers at LKN to optimize the network in order to satisfy the applications' demands. The goal of this joint research work is to have working testbeds for two medical testbeds located in the hospital to demonstrate the impact and benefits of future 6G networks and concepts for medical applications.

Your task during this work is to implement the communcation network for those testbeds. Based on an existing open-access 5G network implementation, you will implement changes according to the progress of the current research. The results of your work, working 6G medical testbeds, will enable researchers to validate their approaches with real-world measurements and allow to demonstrate future 6G concepts to research, industry and politics.

In this project, you will gain a deep insight into how communication networks, especially the Radio Access Network (RAN), work and how different aspects are implemented. Additionally, you will understand the current limitations and weaknesses as well as concepts for improvement. Also, you will get some insights into medical topics if interested. As in such a broad topic there are many open research questions, you additionally have the possibility to also write your thesis or complete an internship.

Most important:

• Motivation and willingness to learn unknown things.
• Ability to work with various partners (teamwork ability).

Of advantage:

• C/C++ and knowledge about how other programming languages work (Python, etc.)
• Knowledge about communication networks (exspecially the RAN), 5G concepts, the P4 language, SDN, Linux.
• Initiative to bring in own ideas and solutions.

Please note: It is not necessary to know about every topic aforementioned, much more it is important to be willing to read oneself in.

Future medical applications put stringent requirements on the underlying communication networks in terms of highest availability, maximal throughput, minimal latency, etc. Thus, in the context of the 6G-life project, new networking concepts and solutions are being developed.

For the research of using 6G for medical applications, the communication and the medical side have joined forces: While researchers from the MITI group (Minimally invasive Interdisciplinary Therapeutical Intervention), located at the hospital "Rechts der Isar", focus on the requirements of the medical applications and collecting needed parameters of patients, it is the task of the researchers at LKN to optimize the network in order to satisfy the applications' demands. The goal of this joint research work is to have working testbeds for two medical testbeds located in the hospital to demonstrate the impact and benefits of future 6G networks and concepts for medical applications.

Your task during this work is to implement the communcation network for those testbeds. Based on an existing open-access 5G network implementation, you will implement changes according to the progress of the current research. The results of your work, working 6G medical testbeds, will enable researchers to validate their approaches with real-world measurements and allow to demonstrate future 6G concepts to research, industry and politics.

In this project, you will gain a deep insight into how communication networks, especially the Radio Access Network (RAN), work and how different aspects are implemented. Additionally, you will understand the current limitations and weaknesses as well as concepts for improvement. Also, you will get some insights into medical topics if interested. As in such a broad topic there are many open research questions, you additionally have the possibility to also write your thesis or complete an internship.

• Most important: Motivation and willingness to learn unknown things.
• C/C++ and knowledge about how other programming languages work (Python, etc.) and/or the willingness to work oneself into such languages.
• Preferred: Knowledge about communication networks (exspecially the RAN), 5G concepts, the P4 language, SDN, Linux.
• Initiative to bring in own ideas and solutions.
• Ability to work with various partners (teamwork ability).

Please note: It is not necessary to know about every topic aforementioned, much more it is important to be willing to read oneself in.

The Prgrammable Communication Networks lab offers the opportunity to work with interesting and entertaining projects related to the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Programmable Data Planes (PDP) paradigms. For the next semester, a position is available to assist on the lab doing the student supervision during the lab sessions.

• Solid knowledge in computer networking (TCP/IP, SDN, P4)
• Solid knowledge of networking tools and Linux (iperf, ssh, etc)
• Good programming skills: C/C++, Python