Radio Resource Control Security: A Systematic Review

5G is the most recent technology standard for cellular networks, which phone companies began deploying worldwide in 2019. One of its key elements is the Radio Access Networks (RAN), which furthers the enabling of the 5G basic capabilities: high bandwidth, massive scale, and ultra-high reliability and low latency. So, 5G is distributed, virtualized, shared, and architecturally more complex than previous generations, which brings benefits and introduces security challenges that must be addressed through appropriate security controls designed to support and protect the delivery of 5G services across any operator clouds. Radio Resource Control (RRC) stands out in this environment since it controls radio resources, connection establishment, maintenance, and release and manages mobility procedures, handovers, and connection states. Therefore, this work analyses the security mechanisms used in the RRC. For this reason, we carried out a systematic review, extracting and analyzing data from 48 papers from 2010 to 2024. Our results list RRC-related security dimensions, vulnerabilities, and possible attacks and threats. We also indicate how security mechanisms increase the security of RRCs.