arXiv subjects

Felix Klement

Publications and source records attributed to Felix Klement.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Form Without Function: Agent Social Behavior in the Moltbook Network

Moltbook is a social network where every participant is an AI agent. We analyze 1,312,238 posts, 6.7~million comments, and over 120,000 agent profiles across 5,400 communities, collected over 40 days (January 27 to March 9, 2026). We evaluate the platform through three layers. At the interaction layer, 91.4% of post authors never return to their own threads, 85.6% of conversations are flat (no reply ever receives a reply), the median time-to-first-comment is 55 seconds, and 97.3% of comments receive zero upvotes. Interaction reciprocity is 3.3%, compared to 22-60% on human platforms. An argumentation analysis finds that 64.6% of comment-to-post relations carry no argumentative connection. At the content layer, 97.9% of agents never post in a community matching their bio, 92.5% of communities contain every topic in roughly equal proportions, and over 80% of shared URLs point to the platform's own infrastructure. At the instruction layer, we use 41 Wayback Machine snapshots to identify six instruction changes during the observation window. Hard constraints (rate limit, content filters) produce immediate behavioral shifts. Soft guidance (``upvote good posts'', ``stay on topic'') is ignored until it becomes an explicit step in the executable checklist. The platform also poses technological risks. We document credential leaks (API keys, JWT tokens), 12,470 unique Ethereum addresses with 3,529 confirmed transaction histories, and attack discourse ranging from template-based SSH brute-forcing to multi-agent offensive security architectures. These persist unmoderated because the quality-filtering mechanisms are themselves non-functional. Moltbook is a socio-technical system where the technical layer responds to changes, but the social layer largely fails to emerge. The form of social media is reproduced in full. The function is absent.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2026

ORCA - An Automated Threat Analysis Pipeline for O-RAN Continuous Development

The Open-Radio Access Network (O-RAN) integrates numerous software components in a cloud-like deployment, opening the radio access network to previously unconsidered security threats. With the ever-evolving threat landscape, integrating security practices through a DevSecOps approach is essential for fast and secure releases. Current vulnerability assessment practices often rely on manual, labor-intensive, and subjective investigations, leading to inconsistencies in the threat analysis. To mitigate these issues, we establish an automated pipeline that leverages Natural Language Processing (NLP) to minimize human intervention and associated biases. By mapping real-world vulnerabilities to predefined threat lists with a standardized input format, our approach is the first to enable iterative, quantitative, and efficient assessments, generating reliable threat scores for both individual vulnerabilities and entire system components within O-RAN. We illustrate the effectiveness of our framework through an example implementation for O-RAN, showcasing how continuous security testing can integrate into automated testing pipelines to address the unique security challenges of this paradigm shift in telecommunications.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2024

Securing the Open RAN Infrastructure: Exploring Vulnerabilities in Kubernetes Deployments

In this paper, we investigate the security implications of virtualized and software-based Open Radio Access Network (RAN) systems, specifically focusing on the architecture proposed by the O-RAN ALLIANCE and O-Cloud deployments based on the O-RAN Software Community (OSC) stack and infrastructure. Our key findings are based on a thorough security assessment and static scanning of the OSC Near Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) cluster. We highlight the presence of potential vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in the Kubernetes infrastructure supporting the RIC, also due to the usage of outdated versions of software packages, and provide an estimation of their criticality using various deployment auditing frameworks (e.g., MITRE ATT&CK and the NSA CISA). In addition, we propose methodologies to minimize these issues and harden the Open RAN virtualization infrastructure. These encompass the integration of security evaluation methods into the deployment process, implementing deployment hardening measures, and employing policy-based control for RAN components. We emphasize the need to address the problems found in order to improve the overall security of virtualized Open RAN systems.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2022

Man-in-the-OBD: A modular, protocol agnostic firewall for automotive dongles to enhance privacy and security

Third-party dongles for cars, e.g. from insurance companies, can extract sensitive data and even send commands to the car via the standardized OBD-II interface. Due to the lack of message authentication mechanisms, this leads to major security vulnerabilities for example regarding the connection with malicious devices. Therefore, we apply a modular, protocol-independent firewall approach by placing a man-in-the-middle between the third-party dongle and the car's OBD-II interface. With this privileged network position, we demonstrate how the data flow accessible through the OBD-II interface can be modified or restricted. We can modify the messages contents or delay the arrival of messages by using our fine-granular configurable rewriting rules, specifically designed to work protocol agnostic. We have implemented our modular approach for a configurable firewall at the OBD-II interface and successfully tested it against third-party dongles available on the market. Thus, our approach enables a security layer to enhance automotive privacy and security of dongle users, which is of high relevance due to missing message authentications on the level of the electronic control units.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2022

Open or not open: Are conventional radio access networks more secure and trustworthy than Open-RAN?

The Open RAN architecture is a promising and future-oriented architecture. It is intended to open up the radio access network (RAN) and enable more innovation and competition in the market. This will lead to RANs for current 5G networks, but especially for future 6G networks, evolving from the current highly integrated, vendor-specific RAN architecture towards disaggregated architectures with open interfaces that will enable to better tailor RAN solutions to the requirements of 5G and 6G applications. However, the introduction of such an open architecture substantially broadens the attack possibilities when compared to conventional RANs. In the past, this has often led to negative headlines that in summary have associated Open RAN with faulty or inadequate security. In this paper, we analyze what components are involved in an Open RAN deployment, how to assess the current state of security, and what measures need to be taken to ensure secure operation.

cs.CR↗