Analysis of authentication and key establishment in inter-generational mobile telephony

Chunyu Tang; David A.  Naumann; Susanne Wetzel

Paper 2013/227

Analysis of authentication and key establishment in inter-generational mobile telephony

Chunyu Tang, David A. Naumann, and Susanne Wetzel

Abstract

Second (GSM), third (UMTS), and fourth-generation (LTE) mobile telephony protocols are all in active use, giving rise to a number of interoperation situations. Although the standards address roaming by specifying switching and mapping of established security context, there is not a comprehensive specification of which are the possible interoperation cases. Nor is there comprehensive specification of the procedures to establish security context (authentication and short-term keys) in the various interoperation scenarios. This paper systematically enumerates the cases, classifying them as allowed, disallowed, or uncertain with rationale based on detailed analysis of the specifications. We identify the authentication and key agreement procedure for each of the possible cases. We formally model these scenarios and analyze their security, in the symbolic model, using the tool ProVerif. We find two scenarios that inherit a known false base station attack. We find an attack on the CMC message of another scenario.

Note: Minor modifications

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Unknown status
Contact author(s): ctang @ cs stevens edu
History: 2013-07-31: revised; 2013-04-29: received; See all versions
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2013/227
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2013/227,
      author = {Chunyu Tang and David A.  Naumann and Susanne Wetzel},
      title = {Analysis of authentication and key establishment in inter-generational mobile telephony},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2013/227},
      year = {2013},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/227}
}