Mutual authentication technique using three entities in 3-G mobile communications

Abstract

Authentication of mobile subscribers and network are a challenging issue to the researchers due to increasing security threats and attacks with the enhanced population of wireless traffic. 3-G or advanced mobile communication system has been developed to speed up the data communication. 3-G mobile communications use two different switching techniques: circuit switching for voice and low speed data communications and packet switching mainly for data communication, but can afford voice communication like VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), video telephony, multimedia service etc. Generally high speed data communication uses packet switching technique through PDSN (Packet Data Serving Node) servers. In circuit switching (3-G network), authentication is mutual where both MS and MSC or network authenticate each other, but in packet switching only network (servers in PDSN) examines the authenticity of MS. In this paper, we propose a mutual authentication technique for circuit and packet switching both that verifies the authenticity of the subscriber as well as the network by subscriber's password, SIM (expressed as identifier) and biometric property of the subscriber, termed as mutual authentication technique using three entities in 3-G mobile communications.