Aly Sabri Abdalla
Mississippi State University, MS·Engineering
Cellular networks are opening up. The open radio access network (O-RAN) is becoming the global standard for 5G and 6G.
- Fields
Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
open radio access network
wireless security
cybersecurity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Characterize O-RAN attacks caused by out-of-sync state changes, timing-induced protocol deviations, malicious user devices and unstable control-app decisions.
- Build AI control loops that monitor protocol and timing behavior across O-RAN components, using temporal invariant models that specify expected behavior over time.
- Develop interface-aware trace analysis and anomaly graphs that link events across the radio, control, data and synchronization planes to reveal cross-interface attacks.
- Design adaptive mitigation policies and evaluate them on software-defined radios, commercial O-RAN equipment and national wireless testbeds, releasing datasets and open-source tools.
More about the research
In this design, the parts of the network that link phones to towers come from many vendors and can be programmed. That lowers cost and speeds up new features. It also creates new weak points. Attackers can exploit timing gaps, control decisions and the way separate network components interact, all without breaking encryption. This collaborative project asks how to find, explain and stop these timing and control attacks.
Why it matters
As carriers and governments adopt open 5G and 6G networks, timing and control attacks could disrupt commercial and mission-critical communications. Methods to detect and block these attacks, along with shared datasets and open-source testing tools, could help network operators, equipment makers and government agencies run safer, more resilient open cellular networks.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Taejoon Kim
Arizona State University Campus Immersion, AZ·Engineering
Develop Zero Trust Chain security software that lets military squads share situational awareness over untrusted 5G networks, using O-RAN Intelligent Controllers on the OAIC platform to detect and block threats in near-real time.
Vuk Marojevic
Mississippi State University, MS·Engineering
Build a passive microwave radiometer flown on a drone on the AERPAW testbed to collect the first large active/passive radio coexistence dataset with ground-truth information.
Guevara Noubir
Northeastern University, MA·Engineering
Analyze threats to spectrum sharing from adversaries who use software-defined radios and machine learning to evade detection, including colluding transmitters.
The school
Mississippi State University: 9 labs on PI Pages, $342M a year on research, 168 research doctorates a year.
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