Utilizing the eSIM for Public Key Cryptography: a Network Security Solution for 6G

Abstract

The future brings a whole suite of technical challenges that are no match for the current standard, 5G. Therefore, those challenges must be resolved by the next generation, 6G. Although features such as extremely high data rate is important, it is even more important to plan the security at this phase. In this paper, we propose to use traditional public key cryptography in 6G instead of experimental technologies such as quantum communications, artificial intelligence, or blockchain. We do so by utilizing the subscriber identity module (SIM) to store the cryptographic keys needed for authentication. While the capabilities of current SIMs are limited by their physical attributes, future SIM technologies such as eSIM show great promise to enable sufficient resources for our scheme as they are virtual. The proposed scheme is simpler, easy to implement, requires no third party, cost effective, and utilizes algorithms that have proven their security for decades.