S-AKA: A Provable and Secure Authentication Key Agreement Protocol for UMTS Networks

• Published in: IEEE transactions on vehicular technology Vol. 60; no. 9; pp. 4509 - 4519
• Main Authors: Yu-Lun Huang, Chih-Ya Shen, Shieh, S. W.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.11.2011; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: 3G mobile communication; Access methods and protocols, osi model; Applied sciences; Authentication; Authentication protocol; Bandwidth; Communication systems; Cryptography; Electric communication systems; Equipments and installations; Exact sciences and technology; GSM; Information, signal and communications theory; key agreement protocol; Messages; Mobile radiocommunication systems; Networks; Protocols; Proving; Radiocommunications; Robustness; Signal and communications theory; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Teleprocessing networks. Isdn; Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) networks; Mobile radiocommunication; GSM system; Wireless telecommunication; Authentication protocol; Vulnerability; Subscriber; Authentication; Security of data; Cryptanalysis; UMTS system; Robustness; Access protocol; key agreement protocol; Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) networks
• ISSN: 0018-9545; 1939-9359
• DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2011.2168247

The authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol of Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS), which is proposed to solve the vulnerabilities found in Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) systems, is still vulnerable to redirection and man-in-the-middle attacks. An adversary can mount these attacks to eavesdrop or mischarge the subscribers in the system. In this paper, we propose a secure AKA (S-AKA) protocol to cope with these problems. The S-AKA protocol can reduce bandwidth consumption and the number of messages required in authenticating mobile subscribers. We also give the formal proof of the S-AKA protocol to guarantee its robustness.