Specification of the Stream Cipher WG-16 Based Confidentiality and Integrity Algorithms

The fourth generation of mobile telecommunications system (marketed as 4G-LTE) is being commercially deployed. Security mechanisms are crucial to protect communications of mobile users from potential malicious attacks as well as to ensure revenue for 4G-LTE network operators. The randomness properties of the keystream generated by the current cipher suites in 4G-LTE standard are difficult to analyze and some vulnerabilities in regard to the integrity algorithms have been recently discovered. To address those issues, this technical report gives a detailed specification of a bit-oriented stream cipher WG-16 as well as the corresponding confidentiality and integrity algorithms that can be employed to secure the emerging 4G-LTE networks.

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