Improved Extensible Authentication Protocol Method for 3GPP Mobile Network Authentication and Key Agreement (EAP-AKA

The 3GPP Mobile Network Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) is the primary authentication mechanism for devices wishing to access mobile networks. RFC 4187 (EAP-AKA) made the use of this mechanism possible within the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) framework. RFC 5448 (EAP-AKA') was an improved version of EAP-AKA. This memo replaces the specification of EAP-AKA'. EAP-AKA' was defined in RFC 5448 and updated EAP-AKA RFC 4187. As such this document obsoletes RFC 5448 and updates RFC 4187. EAP-AKA' differs from EAP-AKA by providing a key derivation function that binds the keys derived within the method to the name of the access network. The key derivation function has been defined in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). EAP-AKA' allows its use in EAP in an interoperable manner. EAP-AKA' also updates the algorithm used in hash functions, as it employs SHA-256 / HMAC- SHA-256 instead of SHA-1 / HMAC-SHA-1 as in EAP-AKA. This version of EAP-AKA' specification specifies the protocol behaviour for both 4G and 5G deployments, whereas the previous version only did this for 4G.