A key challenge for mobile network operators in 6G is to bring together and orchestrate a variety of new emerging players of today's mobile ecosystems in order to provide economically viable and seamless mobile connectivity in form of a multi-stakeholder service. With each new player, be it a cloud, edge or hardware provider, the need for interfaces with secure authentication and authorization mechanisms increases, as does the complexity and operational costs of the public key infrastructures required for the identity and key management. While today's centralized public key infrastructures have proven to be technically feasible in confined and trusted spaces, they do not provide the required security for access control once centralized identity providers must be avoided because of limited cross-domain interoperability, national data protection legislation, or geopolitical-strategic reasons. Recent decentralized identity management concepts, such as the W3C recommendation of Decentralized Identifiers, provide a secure, tamper-proof, and cross-domain identity management alternative for future multi-stakeholder 6G networks without relying on centralized identity provider or certification authorities. This article introduces the concept of Decentralized Identifiers together with the principles of Self-sovereign Identity and discusses opportunities and potential benefits of their application and usage for cross-domain and privacy-preserving identity and key management in 6G networks.
翻译:6G移动网络运营商面临的一个关键挑战是将当今移动生态系统中各种新兴的新参与者聚集在一起,以多利益攸关方服务的形式提供经济上可行和无缝的移动连接,以便以多利益攸关方服务的形式提供经济上可行和无缝的移动连接,每个新角色,无论是云、边缘或硬件供应商,都需要与安全认证和授权机制接口,身份和关键管理所需的公共关键基础设施的复杂性和运营成本也随之增加。虽然今天的中央公用关键基础设施在技术上证明在限制和可信任的空间是可行的,但一旦由于有限的跨域互操作性、国家数据保护立法或地缘政治战略原因,必须避免中央身份提供者,它们就无法为访问控制提供所需的安全保障。最近下放的身份管理概念,如W3C关于分权化识别器的建议,为未来的多利益攸关方6G网络提供了安全、防改动和交叉主用身份管理备选方案,而无需依赖中央身份提供者或验证当局。本文章介绍了分散化身份识别器的概念以及自我主权识别原则,并讨论了其应用和关键保密网络的机会和潜在利益。