Enhanced Authentication Protocol for Improving Security in 3 GPP LTE Networks

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project(3GPP) standard is developing System Architecture Evolution(SAE)/Long Term Evolution(LTE) architecture for the next generation mobile communication system. To provide secure 3G-WLAN interworking in the SAE/LTE architecture, Extensible Authentication Protocol-Authentication and Key Agreement(EAP-AKA) is used.EAP-AKA protocol has several vulnerabilities such as disclosure of user identity, man-in-the-middle attack, Sequence Number (SQN) synchronization, and additional bandwidth consumption. The analyzes threats and attacks in 3G and proposes a new authentication and key agreement protocol based on EAP-AKA. The proposed protocol combines Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) with symmetric key cryptosystem to overcome the vulnerabilities present in the EAP-AKA protocol.