Securing 5G and IoT With Fuzzing

Securing 5G and IoT With Fuzzing

5G will revolutionise many industries, beyond performance increases, the greatest benefit of 5G will be its ability to serve vastly more devices with forecasts that more than 20 billion IoT devices will be connected to the internet by the end of 2023, all depending on 5G for this connectivity. This whitepaper describes security challenges today and tomorrow and how fuzz testing can be your first and last line of defense for uncovering new, unknown bugs, vulnerabilities, and crashes that can have severe outcomes.

As the future linchpin of cellular technology, 5G enables hosts of IoT devices and their connected applications. Some are with us today, others seem more conceptual. Smart IoT devices at home could turn on lights, lock doors, and even turn off the dryer with 5G-connected applications. Wearables such as Apple Watches and Fitbits could track health data and report it to apps in near real-time with 5G. In the smart city of tomorrow, 5G-enabled IoT functionality in stoplights and atmospheric monitors will ease congestion and determine when industry should shut down to curb air pollution. Already, smart parking meters alert when spots open up, adjusting rates for peak hours. Today, some cars offer an in-car Wi-Fi experience, known as “the connected car,” enabling up to 10 devices in a car to be online simultaneously, courtesy of 5G bandwidth.

As an example use case, the number of connected devices in hospital systems continues to grow rapidly to improve patient interaction, reduce overhead, and minimize errors. A leading provider of advanced healthcare sought to ensure the hospital selected safe, secure, and quality technology in the hospital network by establishing meaningful security metrics for procuring new medical devices and a formal baseline for the current fleet of devices in use. Information gathered during testing highlighted a high number of vulnerabilities that could trigger potential denial of service (DoS) attacks. By utilising the Synopsys fuzz testing tool, the healthcare provider has been able to minimise the potential for mass DoS events, ensuring patient care and patient safety.

As part of the Phase Pacific’s Application Security – Application Security Testing & Protection Solution Defensics is an advanced generational fuzzer geared for enterprises and other organisations that need to discover and remediate security weaknesses in software systems with fuzzing being one of the best ways to spot zero-day vulnerabilities that are unknown and have no known workarounds.

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