Signalling Storms and Taylor's Law

<p>Signalling storms have occurred in several generations of mobile networks due to malevolent end users, as well as a consequence of service disruptions and system failures. Due to the massive increase in the volume of traffic and the diversity of end users and applications in 6G, including the massive access of the Internet of Things, signalling storms and other cyberattacks will require attention with research on adequate detection and mitigation schemes, as we move towards the next generation of mobile networks. Thus, in the present paper, we conduct discrete event simulations of a signalling storm, measure its effects in a simulated environment, and observe that it results in deviations from the well-known and naturally observed statistical property known as “Taylor’s Law”. We then discuss a mathematical model of storms, linking the fraction of malevolent or malfunctioning users to the rate of call establishment requests, and show that the mathematical model also exhibits a violation of Taylor’s Law. Since the detection of cyberattacks from network behaviour parameters is a challenging problem, we suggest that the violation of Taylor’s Law may be a useful tool for designing detectors for signalling attacks, or other network attacks or malfunctions.</p>