Signalling Storms and Taylor’s Law

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.
Index Terms—Attack Detection and Mitigation, 6G, Signalling
Attacks, Taylor’s Law