Uma arquitetura baseada em Sidecar para integração de criptografia pós-quântica no Core 5G

Abstract

The rapid advancement of quantum computing poses a significant threat to the security foundations of 5G networks, which currently rely on classical ECC for signaling protection. This dissertation investigates the viability of integrating PQC into the 5G core to establish quantum-resistant communication, potentially via the SBI. Utilizing the free5gc-compose framework, a non-intrusive sidecar proxy architecture was developed and orchestrated via Docker, enabling the “PQC-retrofitting” of standard NFs without altering their underlying source code. The experimental setup evaluates three distinct architectural deployments: a Native (HTTPS/TLS) baseline, a TLS Proxy using traditional certificates, and a PQC Proxy utilizing NIST-standardized algorithms through specialized microservices (wrapper-kem and wrapper-sign). Latency was measured at the HTTP/2 request-response boundary on the SBI, with metrics captured across thirty independent repetitions to ensure statistical significance. The analysis incorporates both end-to-end SBI communication latency and proxy-side Container Metrics captured via an observability stack comprising Prometheus and cAdvisor. Preliminary results establish a baseline median latency of 15.07 ms for the Native architecture, providing a benchmark to quantify the performance overhead introduced by larger PQC key sizes and computational requirements. This work demonstrates that a sidecar approach provides a flexible, modular pathway for scuring 5G infrastructure against future quantum adversaries while maintaining the operational integrity of the core network.