Adaptive authentication and key agreement mechanism for future cellular systems

Since the radio medium can be accessed by anyone, authentication of users is a very important element of a mobile network. Nowadays, in GSM/GPRS a challenge response protocol is used to authenticate the user to the mobile network. Similarly, in third generation mobile systems [3] a challenge response protocol was chosen in such a way as to achieve maximum compatibility with the current GSM security architecture. Both authentication mechanisms use symmetric key cryptography because of the limited processing power of the mobile devices. However, recent research [6] has shown that asymmetric, or public, key cryptography can be enabled successfully in future mobile terminals. In this paper, we propose a new adaptive authentication and key agreement protocol (AAKA) for future mobile communication systems. The novelty of AAKA and its main advantage over other challenge response protocols is that can be adaptive to the mobile environment and use symmetric and/or public key cryptography for user and network authentication

A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201

Context-Awareness Enhances 5G Multi-Access Edge Computing Reliability

The fifth generation (5G) mobile telecommunication network is expected to support Multi- Access Edge Computing (MEC), which intends to distribute computation tasks and services from the central cloud to the edge clouds. Towards ultra-responsive, ultra-reliable and ultra-low-latency MEC services, the current mobile network security architecture should enable a more decentralized approach for authentication and authorization processes. This paper proposes a novel decentralized authentication architecture that supports flexible and low-cost local authentication with the awareness of context information of network elements such as user equipment and virtual network functions. Based on a Markov model for backhaul link quality, as well as a random walk mobility model with mixed mobility classes and traffic scenarios, numerical simulations have demonstrated that the proposed approach is able to achieve a flexible balance between the network operating cost and the MEC reliability.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Access on Feb. 02, 201

Security and Privacy Issues in Wireless Mesh Networks: A Survey

This book chapter identifies various security threats in wireless mesh network (WMN). Keeping in mind the critical requirement of security and user privacy in WMNs, this chapter provides a comprehensive overview of various possible attacks on different layers of the communication protocol stack for WMNs and their corresponding defense mechanisms. First, it identifies the security vulnerabilities in the physical, link, network, transport, application layers. Furthermore, various possible attacks on the key management protocols, user authentication and access control protocols, and user privacy preservation protocols are presented. After enumerating various possible attacks, the chapter provides a detailed discussion on various existing security mechanisms and protocols to defend against and wherever possible prevent the possible attacks. Comparative analyses are also presented on the security schemes with regards to the cryptographic schemes used, key management strategies deployed, use of any trusted third party, computation and communication overhead involved etc. The chapter then presents a brief discussion on various trust management approaches for WMNs since trust and reputation-based schemes are increasingly becoming popular for enforcing security in wireless networks. A number of open problems in security and privacy issues for WMNs are subsequently discussed before the chapter is finally concluded.Comment: 62 pages, 12 figures, 6 tables. This chapter is an extension of the author's previous submission in arXiv submission: arXiv:1102.1226. There are some text overlaps with the previous submissio

BVPSMS: A Batch Verification Protocol for End-to-End Secure SMS for Mobile Users

Short Message Service (SMS) is a widely used communication medium for mobile applications, such as banking, social networking, and e-commerce. Applications of SMS services also include real-time broadcasting messages, such as notification of natural disasters and terrorist attacks, and sharing the current whereabouts to other users, such as notifying urgent business meeting information, transmitting quick information in the battlefield to multiple users, notifying current location to our friends, and sharing market information. However, traditional SMS is not designed with security in mind (e.g. messages are not securely sent). In this paper, we introduce a batch verification Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol, BVPSMS, which provides end-to-end message security over an insecure communication channel between different Mobile Subscribers (MSs). Specifically, the proposed protocol securely transmits SMS from one MS to multiple MS simultaneously. We then evaluate the performance of the BVPSMS protocol in terms of communication and computation overheads, protocol execution time, and batch and re-batch verification times. The impacts of the user mobility, and the time, space, and cost complexity analysis are also discussed. We present a formal proof of the proposed protocol. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first provably-secure batch verification AKA protocol, which provides end-to-end security to the SMS using symmetric keys