Security performance analysis and enhancement of authentication and key agreement protocol for LTE networks

Other Title(s)

تحليل و تحسين الأداء الأمني لبروتوكول الجيل الرابع (LTE)‎

Dissertant

al-Shalalfah, Arij

Thesis advisor

al-Fayyumi, Mustafa

University

Princess Sumaya University for Technology

Faculty

King Hussein Faculty for Computing Sciences

Department

Information Systems Security and Digital Criminology

University Country

Jordan

Degree

Master

Degree Date

2018

English Abstract

Security is essential in most digital systems, including increasingly popular mobile networking.

Protecting user privacy requires secure authentication for service providers.

The authentication and key agreement (AKA) procedure for fourth-generation/ Evolved Packet System (4G/EPS) uses EPS-AKA protocol, part of network access security mechanisms that provide mutual authentication and key agreement between the communication parties (User/Network).

Although this procedure is staple in the security architecture of the EPS, it has weaknesses (such as exposing permanent user identity in clear-text and SQN synchronization failure) that can be exploited by intruders to mount severe attacks.

User identification is essential in AKA, but transmitting user identity in clear text through unsecured channels such as radio waves exposes the user privacy to breaches and other attacks such as denial of service (DoS).

This thesis proposes a security enhancement in the EPS authentication protocol to protect user ID privacy and mitigate the impact of DoS attack in an early stage.

The security of the proposed protocol was analyzed using the automatic analysis tool Scyther to test the security properties of the proposed protocol in terms of mutual authentication, user ID anonymity, user privacy, and data confidentiality.

The performance evaluation for the proposed protocol compared with the standard LTE protocol using mathematical analytics showed an improvement in the protocol performance in consideration of signaling load, bandwidth consumption, and authentication delay.

Minimizing the number of exchange message and the messages’ parameters sized in the protocol is reflected in the performance by reducing the signaling load to about .89%, the bandwidth consumption to 0.01%, and the delay time to 4/5 of the standard LTE protocol authentication delay.

Main Subjects

Information Technology and Computer Science

Topics

• Internet
• Protocols

No. of Pages

83

Table of Contents

• APA
• MLA
• AMA

Language

English

Data Type

Arab Theses

Record ID

BIM-833362