Evaluate the performance of the authentication protocols in cellular networks according to the quality of service

LTE’s success as a high throughput, and umbrella technology for wireless networks is highly affected by the researchers’ capability of solving its current security vulnerabilities. Mutual authentication was adopted by mobile networks to overcome vulnerabilities exploited by “IMSI catcher” and other active attacks. 3GPP’s mutual authentication implementation in EPS AKA succeeded in enhancing the network’s security, but failed to cover weaknesses inherited from its predecessor (UMTS). One of those vulnerabilities is the passive capturing of IMSIs during user identification in the Authentication and Key Agreement protocol. Many researchers tried over the past years, to propose an alternative for EPS AKA, able to ensure high levels of security and offer acceptable QoS performance. In this paper, we will crypt-analyze (SPAKA and PBKP) which was claimed to solve EPS AKA’s privacy and mutual authentication weaknesses, then we will compare its QoS performance to EC-AKA and EPS AKA. Our proposed protocol “EC-AKA” is a real candidate to replace the current authentication and Key Agreement protocol, because of its excellent performance in all the studied parameters.

Distributed User Authentication in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks, WMNs, are foreseen to be an alternative to LANs and last- mile access infrastructures, and they have many unique characteristics, such as ease of deployment and installation, and cost efficiency. Security is crucial for WMNs to be widely accepted as internetworking and access network technologies. Access control, as a security requirement, is one of the most important pillars that lay down the foundation for such an acceptance. We identify in this paper the criteria that should be fulfilled by a viable security solution to control access to WMNs, and specify DUA, a security scheme, that allows for mutual authentication. DUA is based on the distribution of authentication key material over many nodes in such a way that any coalition of a predetermined threshold of corrupted nodes or fewer does not compromise the security of the system. Further, the key material is never handled by a single node. In addition, DUA provides for efficiency through the use of lightweight cryptographic operations.