Dynamic Authentication Protocol for Mobile Networks Using Public-Key Cryptography

The authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol of Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) is still vulnerable to redirection attack which allows an adversary to redirect user traffic form a network to another and eavesdrop or mischarge the subscribers in the system. Moreover, the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) which uniquely identifies a user, is still reveal to the visited network and can still be demanded by an attacker who impersonates a base station, as there is no network authentication in this case, and the non-repudiation services requirement which provide the protection for the subscribers from incorrect bill charging, and the service providers with legal evidence when collecting the bills, are two important points in the non-repudiation requirement. In this paper, a dynamic authentication protocol by integrating the public-key cryptography with the hash-chaining technique is presented to significantly improve the security level as well as to improve the performance.