A LOOKING-FORWARD LAWFUL INTERCEPTION ARCHITECTURE FOR FUTURE MOBILE COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

The 5th Generation (5G) of mobile networks is the latest evolution of telecommunications networks designed to guarantee faster and more reliable connections. 5G technology introduces new and more stringent standards of security and privacy for users, including the use of end-to-end encrypted connections. However, this technology has raised critical issues in Lawful Interception (LI), posing a serious obstacle to intelligence activities for national security, particularly in detecting criminal activities. The rise of cybercrime within the European Union (EU) has highlighted the problem of implementing a Lawful Interception architecture that allows the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) to retrieve and decrypt end-to-end encrypted traffic of users under investigation. In response, this thesis aims to propose and validate a real-time Lawful Interception framework that intercepts traffic between two users connected to the same 5G network, by implementing key escrow mechanisms. Two implementation methodologies of the proposed LI framework are considered: the first uses LI operations in the Core Network (CN), while the second aims to analyse a cutting-edge solution which exploits the benefits of shifting the LI workload to the edge of the network.