Towards a Trust Aware Network Slice based End to End Services for Virtualised Infrastructures

Abstract: Future communication networks such as 5G are expected to support end-to-end delivery of services for several vertical markets with diverging requirements. Network slicing is a key construct that is used to provide end to end logical virtual networks running on a common virtualised infrastructure, which are mutually isolated. Having different network slices operating over the same 5G infrastructure creates several challenges in security and trust. This paper addresses the fundamental issue of trust of a network slice. It presents a trust model and property-based trust attestation mechanisms which can be used to evaluate the trust of the virtual network functions that compose the network slice. The proposed model helps to determine the trust of the virtual network functions as well as the properties that should be satisfied by the virtual platforms (both at boot and run time) on which these network functions are deployed for them to be trusted. We present a logic-based language that defines simple rules for the specification of properties and the conditions under which these properties are evaluated to be satisfied for trusted virtualised platforms. The proposed trust model and mechanisms enable the service providers to determine the trustworthiness of the network services as well as the users to develop trustworthy applications. .