5GAKA-LCCO: A Secure 5G Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol with Less Communication and Computation Overhead

Abstract

There are still some shortcomings in the latest version of the 5G authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol, which is specified by the third-generation partnership project (3GPP). To overcome these shortcomings, an improved primary authentication and key agreement protocol for 5G networks (5G-IPAKA) were proposed. However, one of the shortcomings of the 5G AKA protocol has not been completely overcome in the 5G-IPAKA protocol, resulting in denial of service (DoS) attacks against both the serving network (SN) and the home network (HN). In addition, the 5G AKA protocol has large communication and computation overhead, while the 5G-IPAKA protocol has an even larger communication and computation overhead. These will lead to a great deal of energy consumption. To solve these problems, a secure 5G authentication and key agreement protocol, with less communication and computation overhead (5GAKA-LCCO) is proposed. Then, the 5GAKA-LCCO protocol is proven secure in both the strand space model and the Scyther tool. Further discussion and comparative analysis show that the 5GAKA-LCCO protocol can completely overcome the shortcomings of the latest version of the 5G AKA protocol and is better than the recently improved 5G AKA protocols in overcoming these shortcomings. Additionally, the 5GAKA-LCCO protocol has less communication and computation overhead than the 5G AKA protocol and the recently improved 5G AKA protocols.