Revealing the Threat Landscape of Intent-based Management in O-RAN

Automation has become one key pillar in managing and orchestrating complex networks. Most of the automation today is achieved through programmatically defined policies. One of the most promising ways to achieve a truly autonomous network and service management framework vision is through intents. Intents provides the system with a formal specification of all expectations, requirements, goals, and constraints that should be met without specifying how to achieve them. It follows that an intent-based architecture introduces new functional assets, increasing the attack surface, possibly providing an adversary with additional entry-points with the potential to disrupt network operations, steal Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), intercept sensitive data, and move laterally to other management domains. In this paper we discuss the potential security implication of an Intent-based Management (IbM) system based on Open RAN (O-RAN) architecture and disclose the potential threat landscape that is inherent to such architecture, detailing countermeasures and recommending implementation guidelines. This analysis is relevant in supporting future implementations and standardization of intent-based management capabilities in O-RAN.