This Thursday, the opening session of the 5G auction was held in Brasilia. Brazil's National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL) received 15 proposals from companies and consortia interested in exploring the new technology in Brazilian territory. According to the Minister of Communications, Fábio Faria, this high number of candidates could lead to the session being extended until Friday, the 5th of November. In an exclusive interview about 5G with Exame, Paulo Sergio Melo de Carvalho, former head of the Army's Cyber Defense Center (CDCIBER) and Senior Fellow at the Defense and International Security Program of the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI), warned that 5G is closely tied to Brazil's sovereignty.

"It is a geopolitical game, with interest from several states, as this event will offer space for telecommunications companies, 5G technology suppliers, technology companies (suppliers of software, hardware, microchips, IoT devices), and network infrastructure companies. National security is related to the sovereign country's ability to defend its network communications infrastructure," Carvalho said.

The Senior Fellow warned of a greater risk of cyber attacks: "I'm more concerned about two other possibilities: the first is that, due to the network's capacity and the predictable proliferation of IoTs, those who dominate the infrastructure will find it easier to direct flows and provoke DDoS attacks that are much more powerful than those we see today. The second, more serious, issue is that these devices come with a logic bomb that allows the supplier to remotely turn them off, in a scenario in which the means of production will be increasingly dependent on the 5G network."

Check out the full interview by clicking HERE.