5G - Beyond the Conspiracy

As the 5G revolution inches closer to becoming a reality, the buzz surrounding it is reaching fever pitch across a broad spectrum of industries, including gaming.

The promises made by 5G proponents are dizzying; think internet speeds measured in Gbps as opposed to mere Mbps. Latency speeds could be reduced from 50ms to a mere 1ms with 5G, which is particularly relevant to the world of gaming. Entire technologies will be newly enabled or, if not that, finally allowed to reach their full potential. It is a misconception that 5G is just a faster 4G, or even that it is just the ‘next generation’. It will be an exponential improvement on current capabilities.

In the world of gaming, innovation has far outpaced current technology; most AR and VR experiences are mired by lagging, as are a lot of cloud gaming systems. 5G, and the significantly lower latency it offers, will totally change that.

 Bringing gaming to a whole new level

The impact of 5G will be felt most acutely in the realms of mobile gaming and game streaming. Both will run faster and more smoothly, opening up more potential for cross-platform gaming.

The simplest way to explain why exactly 5G is such a game-changer (quite literally, in the case of our industry) is to think of the current 2G/3G/4G mobile traffic model as a ‘one-way’ system. At the moment, an end user can send voice messages, texts, photos and whatever else their heart desires, and receive the same on a mobile device. 5G will open up a ‘two-way’ connection system, one that will not be isolated to mobile devices; cars, pace-makers, even entire services will be able to tap into internet-of-things, likely increasing the number of end points by a factor of ten.

 Security flaws and all

Yet with these new possibilities comes a new set of security concerns. Inherent to the proliferation of 5G will be a whole host of new devices coming online. This will, by extension, create a lot more potential points of entry for bad actors to launch attacks on gaming platforms, online game servers and the end user device.

 It will be vital to roll out new and robust cyber-security measures for devices as 5G itself is rolled out. In response to this, some gaming companies have gone to public cloud systems like Amazon Web Services (AWS) to avail of more robust software security tools in conjunction with physical hardware upgrades.

The proliferation of 5G has brought more devices online and, by extension, broadened the attack surfaces. All gaming companies must be cognisant of this, as it risks making threats more difficult to detect. Fortunately, deploying real-time telemetry can offset this. There are some very good tools out there using User Entity Behavior Analysis (UEBA) and Machine learning to resolve these challenges.

Additionally, security researchers have long expressed concerns about how 5G’s shared infrastructure (as opposed to the current core infrastructure, which has isolated functionality) could lead to mass failures across multiple networks. In the future, a successfully executed hack could have more far-reaching consequences than ever before, affecting entire electrical grids and town water supplies.

 Into the breach

There will be a number of security issues unique to the gaming industry that could, if left unchecked, lead to serious breaches. Many coders have expressed some irritation that the rollout of 5G will necessitate re-coding a lot of existing programs to accommodate new capabilities such as cross-platform gaming. Ensuring that your software developers incorporate ‘secure coding’ practices by taking vulnerability and pen-testing into the development phase can circumvent many potential security flaws that could arise during this process.

Possible security fallout from porting has been successfully corrected by the use of a form of Security Standard, for example Security Software Development Life Cycle (SSDLC) or Security By Design (SBD). However, gaming companies may want to consider outsourcing as part of this process to enhance compliance to these standards. This can be done as part of the process or as an add-on at final stage or at validation stage.

Regardless of the individual security of an account on a player’s platform of choice—be it an Xbox, mobile phone or PC—if the connection between the two devices is not sufficiently encrypted, player’s accounts could be vulnerable. This is not unique to 5G, but will become a more relevant security concern as cross-platform play becomes widespread, underlining the importance of incorporating measures such as multi-factor authentication into user logins.

Just recently, the gaming industry witnessed the sheer scale of the cyberattack on Nintendo’s Network IDs (NNIDs), which was chalked up to an authentication flaw that arose when users attempted to link accounts to the network IDs of already existing players. This opened the door for a hacker to access another player’s account simply by knowing their network ID.

Central to this hack is a message that anyone looking to leverage 5G in the gaming industry should heed: authentication hacks happen when threat actors take advantage of an account’s capabilities. If you are opening up the door to a ton of new 5G-related capabilities, you are also opening yourself up to potential issues.

Help is out there

New technologies can be exciting and worrying in equal measure for gaming companies. While you may feel a little out of your depth, experts are out there with the skills and expertise to help you transition into the next generation of gaming.

The best way to reap the benefits of 5G without the potential drawbacks is to talk to a security specialist who can help you identify potential threats with penetration testing and roll-out a comprehensive strategy so that you can pre-empt issues instead of scrambling to deal with their aftermath. Outsourcing at various stages of the dev process can help you achieve compliance with security standards, which means fewer headaches for you in the long run.