Temporary Internet Access for Authentication and Key Agreement for LTE Networks

Abstract

Evolved Packet System-Authentication and Key Agreement (EPS-AKA) is the security protocol in Long-Term Evolution (LTE). However, it is still vulnerable to user identity attacks and fake eNBs. Efficient EPS-AKA (EEPS-AKA) was proposed with some improvements. Nevertheless, the EEPS-AKA is vulnerable to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and fake eNBs, despite of some minor flaws in its procedures. In this paper, we propose Temporary Internet Access (TIA)-AKA to: (1) prevent user identity disclosure by implementing some additional steps, which allows a user equipment (UE) to request a temporary UE identity to access Internet; and (2) authenticate the Mobility Management Entity (MME) through the validity of the assigned IP address. Physical address and simple password exponential key exchange (SPEKE) method are combined into the proposed TIA-AKA. Efficiency analysis suggests the TIA-AKA provides a fully protection on the user identity and prevent the DoS attack, at the expense of increased bandwidth consumption and processing delay.