TESLA-for-5G: Broadcast Authentication for 5G Networks Using TESLA

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 25 Jun 2026] TESLA-for-5G: Broadcast Authentication for 5G Networks Using TESLA Subin Song (1), Michael K. Reiter (2), Taekyoung Kwon (1) ((1) Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea, (2) Duke University, Durham, NC, USA) 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. Comments: 20 pages, 8 tables, 2 algorithms, no figures Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) Cite as: arXiv:2606.26528 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2606.26528v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.26528 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Subin Song [view email] [v1] Thu, 25 Jun 2026 02:07:02 UTC (38 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)