Integrating identity-based cryptography in IMS service authentication

Nowadays, the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a promising research field. Many ongoing works related to the security and the performances of its employment are presented to the research community. Although, the security and data privacy aspects are very important in the IMS global objectives, they observe little attention so far. Secure access to multimedia services is based on SIP and HTTP digest on top of IMS architecture. The standard deploys AKA-MD5 for the terminal authentication. The third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) provided Generic Bootstrapping Architecture (GBA) to authenticate the subscriber before accessing multimedia services over HTTP. In this paper, we propose a new IMS Service Authentication scheme using Identity Based cryptography (IBC). This new scheme will lead to better performances when there are simultaneous authentication requests using Identity-based Batch Verification. We analyzed the security of our new protocol and we presented a performance evaluation of its cryptographic operationsComment: 13Page

Convergence architecture for home service communities

Nowadays, home networks have integrated day to day life through the classical internet access and deliver numerous services to end users. This home entrance is a real opportunity for operators to deploy services directly between homes. However, one major issue is the interconnection between Home Networks (HN) which requires suitable architectures and efficient authentication mechanisms. In this paper, two network architectures were proposed to interconnect HNs in order to support home service delivery and then compared with the IMS as reference architecture. The first architecture was based on a centralized SIP solution and used HTTP digest for authentication purpose; while the second proposition consisted in a distributed architecture based on pure P2P and Identity based cryptography. The study of these two solutions has been undergone through the simulation of a simple photo sharing scenario. As a result, the centralized SIP solution can be relevant for an average number of users and the easiest way to deploy new services. The decentralized solution (pure P2P) can be deployed for small service communities and may be compliant to larger system with improved algorithms

Options for Securing RTP Sessions

The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) is used in a large number of different application domains and environments. This heterogeneity implies that different security mechanisms are needed to provide services such as confidentiality, integrity, and source authentication of RTP and RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) packets suitable for the various environments. The range of solutions makes it difficult for RTP-based application developers to pick the most suitable mechanism. This document provides an overview of a number of security solutions for RTP and gives guidance for developers on how to choose the appropriate security mechanism

Designing and prototyping WebRTC and IMS integration using open source tools

WebRTC, or Web Real-time Communications, is a collection of web standards that detail the mechanisms, architectures and protocols that work together to deliver real-time multimedia services to the web browser. It represents a significant shift from the historical approach of using browser plugins, which over time, have proven cumbersome and problematic. Furthermore, it adopts various Internet standards in areas such as identity management, peer-to-peer connectivity, data exchange and media encoding, to provide a system that is truly open and interoperable. Given that WebRTC enables the delivery of multimedia content to any Internet Protocol (IP)-enabled device capable of hosting a web browser, this technology could potentially be used and deployed over millions of smartphones, tablets and personal computers worldwide. This service and device convergence remains an important goal of telecommunication network operators who seek to enable it through a converged network that is based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). IMS is an IP-based subsystem that sits at the core of a modern telecommunication network and acts as the main routing substrate for media services and applications such as those that WebRTC realises. The combination of WebRTC and IMS represents an attractive coupling, and as such, a protracted investigation could help to answer important questions around the technical challenges that are involved in their integration, and the merits of various design alternatives that present themselves. This thesis is the result of such an investigation and culminates in the presentation of a detailed architectural model that is validated with a prototypical implementation in an open source testbed. The model is built on six requirements which emerge from an analysis of the literature, including previous interventions in IMS networks and a key technical report on design alternatives. Furthermore, this thesis argues that the client architecture requires support for web-oriented signalling, identity and call handling techniques leading to a potential for IMS networks to natively support these techniques as operator networks continue to grow and develop. The proposed model advocates the use of SIP over WebSockets for signalling and DTLS-SRTP for media to enable one-to-one communication and can be extended through additional functions resulting in a modular architecture. The model was implemented using open source tools which were assembled to create an experimental network testbed, and tests were conducted demonstrating successful cross domain communications under various conditions. The thesis has a strong focus on enabling ordinary software developers to assemble a prototypical network such as the one that was assembled and aims to enable experimentation in application use cases for integrated environments

Interworking Architectures in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks: An Algorithmic Overview

The scarce availability of spectrum and the proliferation of smartphones, social networking applications, online gaming etc., mobile network operators (MNOs) are faced with an exponential growth in packet switched data requirements on their networks. Haven invested in legacy systems (such as HSPA, WCDMA, WiMAX, Cdma2000, LTE, etc.) that have hitherto withstood the current and imminent data usage demand, future and projected usage surpass the capabilities of the evolution of these individual technologies. Hence, a more critical, cost-effective and flexible approach to provide ubiquitous coverage for the user using available spectrum is of high demand. Heterogeneous Networks make use of these legacy systems by allowing users to connect to the best network available and most importantly seamlessly handover active sessions amidst them. This paper presents a survey of interworking architectures between IMT 2000 candidate networks that employ the use of IEFT protocols such as MIP, mSCTP, HIP, MOBIKE, IKEV2 and SIP etc. to bring about this much needed capacity