Medium access control layer security

Abstract

The present disclosure proposes a solution on MAC layer security. In particular, two types of transport blocks (TBs) are introduced, where a first type of TB includes information that requires protection on the lower layer and a second type of TB includes information that does not require protection on the lower layer. For the first type of TB, cryptographic protection is applied on the lower layer where the TBs are composed (for example, the MAC layer). No protection is applied on the lower layer to the second type of TB. It may not be required to protect each and every MAC CE. There may be types of MAC CEs that cannot significantly be abused by attackers, so they can be transmitted without protection. In this way, it can prevent attacks exploiting the lack of protection of MAC CEs. A TB can be understood as a MAC PDU, i.e., alternatively, two types of MAC PDUs are introduced.

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