Boost Your Immunity: VACCINE for Preventing a Novel Stealthy Slice Selection Attack in 5G and Beyond

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G networks can offer network slices customized according to the demands of the services to enhance the quality of their users’ experience. The time for selecting an appropriate network slice to facilitate traffic flow between users and services by the core network functions in 5G networks is crucial for services such as emergency service and ultra-reliable low latency services. Therefore, we propose a distributed slice selection architecture for 5G and beyond networks to reduce the waiting time for starting services for users. The proposed architecture distributes slice selection function (SSF) to the edge of the network. The networks have to ensure stealthy slice selection attack (S3 attack) free operation, as moving the SSF to the edge increases attack surface. Attackers can launch S3 attack by manipulating the slice selection decisions of SSFs distributed in the network edge. The S3 attacker intentionally maps service requests from users to inappropriate network slices to damage cloud radio access network utilization and the quality of experience of users. In this article, we also present a countermeasure to tackle the S3 attack using a novel protocol called VACCINE ( v erifi a ble priva c y-preserving proto c ol for sl i ce selectio n in 5G and beyond n e tworks). VACCINE also ensures privacy-preserving slice selection by the SSFs to prevent traffic analysis attacks. We prove the chosen-ciphertext attack security strength of VACCINE and also compare the computational cost of VACCINE with other related protocols.