Secure and Efficient AKA Scheme and Uniform Handover Protocol for 5G Network Using Blockchain

Abstract

The fifth generation (5G) cellular network provides users with high-quality services due to its high transmission rate and low latency. It will support Internet of Things (IoT) devices and enable new applications in health, banking, education, etc. Security is essential in this network because vulnerabilities may be exploited to disrupt these applications which may directly impact our life. Authentication and key agreement (AKA) and handover (HO) are usually the target of cyberattacks in any cellular network. On the other hand, blockchain is a peer-to-peer network that aims to maintain an immutable and secure ledger. This new technology will be used widely to secure many applications. This paper aims to develop an efficient and secure AKA scheme and uniform handover protocol for 5G network using blockchain. The home network (HN) is not involved in the AKA scheme and HO protocol to protect the HN from attacks, such as denial of service (DoS) attacks, and also lower the communication and computation overhead. Moreover, our HO protocol is uniform in the sense that it can be used for all HO scenarios. The protocol is also efficient because it requires exchanging a few amount of data. It can also achieve forward/backward secrecy. Furthermore, the blockchain is used to verify the public keys of the network nodes which is necessary to secure our AKA scheme and HO protocol. It also records the locations of the users which is necessary for the functionality of the network. Our evaluations demonstrate that the proposed HO protocol is secure, uniform, and can achieve the forward/backward secrecy. Furthermore, our AKA scheme requires lower computation and computation overhead comparing to the existing schemes, and preserves the energy of the limited-energy mobile devices.

A Secure Blockchain-Based Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme for 3GPP 5G Networks

“…However, there is no formally proved protocol presented in the proposal. Haddad et al proposed a blockchain-based 5G authentication protocol based on a public blockchain in [10,11]. They suggested that all 5G access points (APs) can use the UE public keys listed in the blockchain to perform mutual authentication between the AP and the UE.…”

“…Overall, Table 1 summarizes all recent blockchain-based 5G authentication schemes and their challenges. Decentralized authentications with low overhead [9] No single trust authority [10,11] Decentralized authentication to nearby gNBs [12] Removal of obsolete data in blockchains [13] Inter-domain authentication [14] Improving 5G EAP-AKA protocol security [19] Formally verified protocol using chameleon signature [15] 5G Handover Authentication Efficient handover authentication [16] Optimized for frequent handover [17] Lightweight handover authentication [18] Traceability for base stations to record malicious devices FV = formally verified protocol; DA = device anonymity; PFS = perfect forward secrecy; LA = lightweight authentication; DoS = DoS attack prevention; DDoS = DDoS attack prevention.…”

Markov Renewal Prediction and Radial Kronecker Neural Network Based Handover for Seamless Mobility

“…𝐷𝑀 𝑖𝑗 (𝛾) = (𝐻𝑂 𝑖𝑗𝛾 ) 𝐻𝑂 𝑖𝑗 (10) From the above Eqns. ( 9) and ( 10), '𝐻𝑂 𝑖𝑗 ' represents the number of handovers from mobile node '𝑖' to mobile node '𝑗', and '𝐻 𝑛 ' represents the total number of mobile node handovers.…”

“…The CNN here allocated the resource in an efficient manner while the load balancing and error rate were handled using LSTM, therefore ensuring overall accuracy. Yet another uniform handover protocol using blockchain was designed by Haddad et al [10] with the objective of reducing computation overhead.…”