An Improved Secure Authentication and Key Protocol for GSM Network

Abstract:

The wireless network is at the focal point amongst the changing technology trends of the past decade with the mobile telecommunication system as its most prevalent technology, in that the availability and growing expectation of pervasive connectivity are ever on the increase. To reduce the security problems and vulnerabilities observed in the mobile telecommunication system, the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) network was proposed. However, the network is faced with attacks such as redirection, impersonation, Man-in-Middle among others, as a result, of a lack of mutual authentication in the original GSM network. These vulnerabilities make it susceptible to fraudulent access and eavesdropping by intruders. In this study, a new cryptographic scheme for the GSM network is proposed to improve the challenges of the original authentication protocol found in the GSM Network. The security analysis was done using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications tool, and from the Atse OFMC, the protocol is safe, and the protocol was verified formally using the Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic method. From the performance analysis, the communication overhead such as computational overhead at the Home Location Register (HLR) and storage overhead at the Visitor Location Register (VLR) is reduced compared to the existing authentication protocol. The proposed protocol achieves mutual authentication between communication parties, a roaming scenario for the roaming user was considered and 71% of the network signaling congestion overhead is also mitigated during authentication for users that roam into a foreign network.

Keywords: Secure authentication, key agreement, ISAKA protocol, visitor location register, home location register, free-identify based mutual authentication