Mitigation of desynchronization attack during inter-eNodeB handover key management in LTE

Abstract

In recent years, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is taking on a pivotal role in standardizing the 4G network. Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a standard by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and its main goal is to transform into 4G from mobile cellular wireless technology. Optimization of radio access techniques along with the improvement in the LTE systems lead 3GPP in developing the 4G standard as the next generation of LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) wireless networks. The support of full inter-working and flat Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity with heterogeneous wireless access networks in both 3GPP LTE and LTE-A architecture leads to new challenges in the security aspects. The primary challenge of LTE is to provide security to end users. Despite of security architecture available in LTE, still there exist vulnerabilities which can compromise the whole network. The major contribution of this paper is to design a new mitigation scheme which reduces the impact of desynchronization attack during the inter-eNodeB handover key management in LTE. Desynchronization attack can lead to serious consequences like compromise of User Equipment (UE) and eNodeB, during inter-eNodeB handover key management.