'Flat IP' mobile networks face new security challenges

Data will flow more freely as mobile communications networks move toward a "flat IP" model, but developers and operators will face new security challenges, according to engineers gathered at the Freescale Technology Forum in Paris.

Today's centralized, hierarchical mobile networks are overengineered, said Alcatel Lucent's Vice President Network and Technology Strategy Pierre Tournassoud.

Their use of specialized transport protocols makes them complex to design and manufacture, he said. This is good for a few big manufacturers but not for the industry overall, nor for the end-user, Tournassoud said in the keynote address on the second day of the event organized by Freescale Semiconductor.

Instead, future networks should adopt the kind of flat IP model toward which fixed-line networks are moving, Tournassoud said. There, the shift has led to a proliferation of so-called "triple-play" services, where operators use DSL to deliver phone calls, television programs, and Internet access over the same pair of copper wires, all managed using IP.

Vendors approaching the problem from the PC world, such as Intel, with its work on WiMax, or the traditional telecommunications equipment vendors working on LTE -- the Long Term Evolution enhancement to today's 3G mobile networks -- are converging on some common technologies.

With this approach, "mobile networks can be made a lot simpler like Internet platforms for mobile communications," Tournassoud said.

So simple, in fact, in the future mobile phone users could even have their own network base station at home, as operators adopt new technology such as femtocells -- tiny transmitters that improve in-home wireless coverage, plugging into a DSL connection to carry traffic back to the mobile network core over an IP connection.

But with the advantages of IP come some dangers: The Internet is open not just to well-meaning developers but also to all manner of criminals and vandals, and our always-on DSL connections bring us not only voice and video, but also viruses, along with phishing attacks, and Trojan horses.

That's why the developers of the next generation of mobile networks are trying to build security in from the start, according to Tournassoud and numerous engineers working for Freescale Semiconductor and its partners that were also present at the Paris conference.

"It requires a very solid, very secure hardware platform," said Tournassoud.

Others at the event echoed his sentiment. Alan Brown, principal analyst with Gartner Dataquest's semiconductor group, said a move to a flat IP structure in mobile networks will bring a lot of flexibility to mobile operators, application developers, and service providers. However, "with standard interfaces, there is also the ability for hackers to get into routers for financial gain or for the challenge," he said.

Freescale demonstrated a hardware reference platform with a number of security features for future mobile devices, its i.MX31 and i.MX31L multimedia applications processors. Based on the Arm 11 core designed by Arm Holdings, the chips have a run-time integrity checker that verifies the digital signature of code before executing it. This can help stop malware sneaking onto the device -- although it could also be used to lock down a mobile device and prevent the installation of third-party applications, much as Apple has attempted to do with its iPhone.