A novel authentication scheme for long-term evolution mobility management: A security investigation

Abstract

Long-term evolution in wireless broadband communication aims to provide secure communication for users and a high data rate for a fourth-generation network. Even though the fourth-generation network provides security, some loopholes lead to several attacks on the fourth-generation network attacks. The denial-of-service attack occurs when the user communicates with a rogue base station, and the radio base station in fourth-generation long-term evolution networks ensures that the user is attached to the rogue node assigned network. The location leak attack occurs when the packets are sniffed to find any user’s location using its temporary mobile subscriber identity. Prevention of rogue base station and location leak attacks helps the system achieve secure communication between the participating entities. Earlier works in long-term evolution mobility management do not address preventing attacks such as denial-of-service, rogue base stations and location leaks and suffer from computational costs while providing security features. Hence, the present paper addresses the vulnerability of these attacks. It also investigates how these attacks occur and exposes communication in the fourth-generation network. To mitigate these vulnerabilities, the paper proposes a novel authentication scheme. The proposed scheme is simulated using Network Simulator 3, and the security analysis of the proposed scheme is shown using AVISPA –a security tool. Numerical analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme significantly reduces communication overhead and computational costs associated with the fourth-generation long-term evolution authentication mechanism.