Handover Authentication Protocol Research Articles

AHA-BV: Access and handover authentication protocol with batch verification for satellite–terrestrial integrated networks

At present, the rapid development of satellite capabilities has prompted the proposal of satellite–terrestrial integrated networks (STIN), which solves the problem of limited signal coverage of terrestrial cellular networks, further promotes the globalization process, and realizes global data sharing and on-demand use. However, due to the high openness of satellite-to-ground links in STIN, users are vulnerable to attacks such as eavesdropping, replay, tampering, and impersonation when requesting access to satellite nodes and obtaining subscription services. To ensure the security and reliability, many authentication protocols have been proposed, but there are still some shortcomings, such as high authentication overhead, vulnerability to certain attacks. In addition, for inter-satellite handovers caused by the highly dynamic topology of satellites, the computational overhead of existing handover authentication mechanisms is too high to be applied to frequent inter-satellite handover scenarios in STIN. To address the above issues, in this paper, we propose a new access and handover authentication protocol with batch verification for STIN, namely the AHA-BV protocol. The AHA-BV protocol not only realizes mutual authentication and key negotiation between users and satellite access points without the participation of the network control center, but also ensures the conditional anonymity of users during the access authentication phase. Furthermore, the lightweight batch verification mechanism reduces the risk of computing bottlenecks when resource-constrained satellites receive a large number of access authentication requests. Not only that, the AHA-BV protocol can also achieve sustained trust in subscription services from STIN with low computational overhead during the inter-satellite handover authentication phase. Formal and heuristic security analysis show that the AHA-BV protocol can meet the security requirements of STIN. Performance analysis indicates that the AHA-BV protocol has low authentication overhead while ensuring security, and is more suitable for users under satellite dynamic topology to access and obtain subscription services from STIN.

A Blockchain-Assisted Security Protocol for Group Handover of MTC Devices in 5G Wireless Networks.

In the realm of the fifth-generation (5G) wireless cellular networks, renowned for their dense connectivity, there lies a substantial facilitation of a myriad of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, which can be supported by the massive machine-type communication (MTC) technique, a fundamental communication framework. In some scenarios, a large number of machine-type communication devices (MTCD) may simultaneously enter the communication coverage of a target base station. However, the current handover mechanism specified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 16 incurs high signaling overhead within the access and core networks, which may have negative impacts on network efficiency. Additionally, other existing solutions are vulnerable to malicious attacks such as Denial of Service (DoS), Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, and the failure of Key Forward Secrecy (KFS). To address this challenge, this paper proposes an efficient and secure handover authentication protocol for a group of MTCDs supported by blockchain technology. This protocol leverages the decentralized nature of blockchain technology and combines it with certificateless aggregate signatures to mutually authenticate the identity of a base station and a group of MTCDs. This approach can reduce signaling overhead and avoid key escrow while significantly lowering the risk associated with single points of failure. Additionally, the protocol protects device anonymity by encrypting device identities with temporary anonymous identity markers with the Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) to abandon serial numbers to prevent linkage attacks. The resilience of the proposed protocol against predominant malicious attacks has been rigorously validated through the application of the BAN logic and Scyther tool, underscoring its robust security attributes. Furthermore, compared to the existing solutions, the proposed protocol significantly reduces the authentication cost for a group of MTCDs during handover, while ensuring security, demonstrating commendable efficiency.

Provable Secure and Lightweight Blockchain-Based V2I Handover Authentication and V2V Broadcast Protocol for VANETs

Provable Secure and Lightweight Blockchain-Based V2I Handover Authentication and V2V Broadcast Protocol for VANETs

A Novel Access and Handover Authentication Scheme in UAV-Aided Satellite-Terrestrial Integration Networks Enabling 5G

As an outlook of the terrestrial network, the flexible Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-aided satellite-terrestrial integration network would have numerous prospective applications such as service enhancement, maritime communication, military, and emergency communication, which is getting significant attention. However, the public and open-access network must result in various imperative risks including impersonation, sensitive data, and privacy disclosure. Due to several unique characteristics including long transmission distance, unstable communication environment, resource-limited and highly dynamic characteristics of UAVs, diversified terminals that lack the ability of accessing the satellite and may be resource-limited, there are new challenges for the access authentication process in the UAV-Aided Satellite-Terrestrial Integration Networks with 5G. In this paper, we present a novel Physically Unclonable Function (PUF)-based access authentication scheme consisting of two access authentication protocols for the UAV and the ground terminals like 5G User Equipments (UEs), respectively. Two access authentication protocols for the drone and the terminals can both achieve mutual authentication, key agreement, and privacy protection with distinct advantages of no need to store secret key and supporting physical attack resistance. Finally, we propose an efficient handover authentication protocol executed by the ground terminals when the UAV is required to switch. We employ different security analysis tools to analyze the security of all proposed protocols, as well as present informal security analysis on various security properties. The performance comparison and evaluations show our protocols have better advantages.

FHAP: Fast Handover Authentication Protocol for High-Speed Mobile Terminals in 5G Satellite–Terrestrial-Integrated Networks

The integration of satellite and terrestrial networks presents new opportunities and challenges for High Speed Rail (HSR) communications. Since the HSR runs vary fast, user terminals on the HSR have to perform handover authentication when the HSR passes through different terrestrial base stations or satellite coverage areas. To improve the security and robustness of HSR communication services, a Fast Handover Authentication Protocol (FHAP) for high-speed mobile terminals in the 5G Satellite-Terrestrial integrated Networks (STN) is proposed. In the FHAP, user terminals in the same carriage form a temporary group managed by a relay node. The pre-handover authentication mechanism is employed, in which the terrestrial 5G core network configures the pre-authentication information to multiple access nodes based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem according to the location information of the HSR. Thus, group members and one of the access nodes can achieve fast handover authentication with the pre-configured information. Considering that HSR has a high running speed, when handover authentication fails, user terminals can perform handover authentication with other access nodes, and the probability of handover authentication failure caused by a single access node can be effectively reduced. We use the protocol verification tool Scyther and the Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic to prove the security of the FHAP and compare it with other similar protocols in terms of signaling, bandwidth, and computational overhead. The analysis results show that the FHAP satisfies better security properties and has excellent performance.

HOOPOE: High Performance and Efficient Anonymous Handover Authentication Protocol for Flying Out of Zone UAVs

The unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in military and civilian systems access sensitive data via cellular networks and are ubiquitous. Therefore, the number of handovers may increase, and the process of sharing authentication keys between drones to new drones may be vulnerable to eavesdropping due to the wireless connectivity. For example, a UAV initially served by cell A may be handed over to cell B after a certain point. Therefore, Security and privacy concerns raise if there is a change in the flight path of the UAV due to wide-area connectivity traffic management, including authentication threats as well as the leakage of identity, location, and flying routes. Also, drones are resource-constrained devices that cannot perform extensive operations, leading to the inability to resist drone capture attacks and impersonation attacks. Therefore, this paper presents a high-performance and efficient anonymous handover authentication protocol to secure the drone traveling path. The protocol utilizes the advantages of the AES-RSA algorithm to provide efficient and secure key management and a fast verification and signature generation that speeds up drone authentication. The protocol's security was proved using the formal verification ROR model and automated security verifier ProVerif tool to validate the protocol resistance against various attacks and provided forward secrecy. In addition, the performance of the proposed protocol is evaluated using the OMNeT++ simulator in terms of communication, computation cost, energy consumption, packet drop ratio, end-to-end delay, and throughput. The results showed that the protocol achieves better security, efficiency, and performance than other protocols.

A novel and quantum-resistant handover authentication protocol in IoT environment

A novel and quantum-resistant handover authentication protocol in IoT environment

XAuth: Secure and Privacy-Preserving Cross-Domain Handover Authentication for 5G HetNets

5G networks are highly heterogeneous, with ultradense base stations (BSs), due to the low penetration of millimeter waves and the availability of different access technologies. However, the continuous heterogeneity and densification of 5G networks pose great challenges to network security, especially for user mobility support. In the process of user handover between BSs or between different network domains, user access authentication and security session establishment are far riskier compared to 4G networks. On one hand, the overhead of handover authentication increases significantly as handovers become more frequent in an ultradense network. On the other hand, the differentiation of security schemes in heterogeneous networks poses a big challenge to handover authentication. Successfully designing a secure, privacy-preserving, and efficient handover authentication protocol for heterogeneous and ultra-dense 5G networks would substantially expand the prospects of future 5G network applications. Although numerous solutions (e.g., challengeresponse-based, public key cryptography-based, physical layer information-based, and blockchain-based solutions) have been proposed to solve the cross-domain handover authentication problem, most of them surfer from security and privacy vulnerabilities and unreasonable performance overhead. In this paper, we propose XAuth, a secure and privacy-preserving authentication protocol for both intra-domain and inter-domain handover in 5G Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) based on blockchain. The proposed protocol can achieve mutual authentication, key agreement between User Equipment (UE) and target network, and is characterized by forward secrecy, backward secrecy, user anonymity, and conditional privacy preservation. Formal security analysis and comprehensive performance evaluation demonstrate the security and effectiveness of the proposed protocol.

BEPHAP: A Blockchain-based Efficient Privacy-Preserving Handover Authentication Protocol with key agreement for Internet of Vehicles

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) can significantly improve transportation efficiency and ensure traffic safety. Authentication is regarded as the fundamental defense line against attacks in IoV. However, the state-of-the-art approaches suffer from several drawbacks, including bottlenecks of the single cloud server model, high computational overhead of operations, excessive trust in cloud servers and roadside units (RSUs), and leakage of vehicle trajectory privacy. This paper introduces BEPHAP, a Blockchain-based Efficient Privacy-preserving Handover Authentication Protocol with key agreement for internet of vehicles, to address these problems. BEPHAP achieves anonymous cross-domain mutual handover authentication with key agreement based on the tamper-proof blockchain, symmetric cryptography, and the chameleon hash function under a security model that cloud servers and RSUs may launch attacks. BEPHAP is particularly well suited for IoV since it allows vehicles to only perform lightweight cryptographic operations during authentication. BEPHAP also achieves data confidentiality, unlinkability, traceability, non-repudiation, non-frameability, and key escrow freeness. Formal verification based on ProVerif and formal security proofs based on the BAN logic indicates that BEPHAP is resistant to various typical attacks, such as man-in-the-middle attacks, impersonation attacks, and replay attacks. Performance analysis demonstrates that BEPHAP surpasses existing works in both computation and communication efficiencies. It is worth noting that BEPHAP reduces the computational cost of vehicles by 2 to 4 orders of magnitude compared to current schemes. And the message loss rate remains 0 at 5000 requests per second, which meets the requirement of IoV.

Authentication and Key Agreement Algorithm for Handover of Next-Generation High-Speed Railway

In order to solve the problems that the handover key in the handover authentication protocol of 5 G-R wireless communication system under the next-generation high-speed railway does not have forward security and authentication efficiency is low, a novel 5 G-R handover authentication and key agreement algorithm is proposed. First, the authentication information is used to replace the identity information in the handover request message, which overcomes the shortcomings of the clear text transmission of the identity information. Second, a handover key update strategy based on lattice theory is designed. The dynamic update and forward and backward security of the handover key are realized by using the feature function and the auxiliary module function on the lattice. Third, the message authentication code is added to realize mutual authentication between communication parties, which can effectively prevent replay, the man in the middle, and other malicious attacks. Finally, the strand space formalization method is used for security verification. The results show that the proposed method not only has higher security and efficiency than other comparison methods but also can meet the high-security requirements of the next-generation 5 G-R handover authentication.

B-HAS: Blockchain-Assisted Efficient Handover Authentication and Secure Communication Protocol in VANETs

The traditional handover authentication protocols in Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) suffer from important issues like single source of trust, Single-Point-of-Failure (SPoF), and fails to provide robust authentication due to several potential threats. In state-of-the-art of handover authentication, it takes high computation and communication overhead. The main aim of this paper is to integrate blockchain technology into the VANET system and to design a robust handover authentication protocol to solve the above-mentioned challenges. In this article, we design blockchain-based mutual authentication and session key agreement protocols for intra-vehicular and inter-vehicular (handover case) scenarios by implementing the hash function and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). We also validate the proposed model by using the Scyther tool and Real-Or-Random (ROR) oracle, standard model. The proposed scheme confirms security against all applicable attacks during security analysis. Furthermore, a detailed comparative analysis reveals that the proposed method has low communication and computation overheads and achieves more functionality features and security attributes than the relevant schemes.

Design of Secure Authentication Handover Protocol for Innovative Mobile Multimedia Services in 5G MEC Environments

<p>5G advanced technology has introduced innovative multimedia services, thus propelling the rise of the mobile multimedia market. While the ubiquity of mobile multimedia services has boosted customer convenience, it has also unlocked the way to possible security concerns that potentially damage users’ privacy and service providers’ properties. Several standards and researches have been proposed to counter these threats, notably those concentrating on authentication between users and service applications. Unfortunately, these studies are limited to address a new challenge, secure handover among distributed application functions in 5G Multi-access Edge Cloud (MEC) environments. Motivated by this, we present a handover authentication protocol with push-key and pull-key optimization options in 5G mobile multimedia application services. The proposed protocol provides mutual authentication, secure key exchange, confidentiality, and integrity. Furthermore, it also supports perfect forward secrecy, optimal handover, and anonymity, which were not previously considered in prior studies. While formal verification through BAN Logic and Scyther proved that the protocol is secure against attacks that violate the supported security requirements, comparative analysis of the proposed protocol against existing studies demonstrates that the protocol is simultaneously efficient.</p> <p> </p>

Enhanced pairing‐free identity‐based broadcast authentication protocol in WSN using ElGamal ECC

AbstractAuthentication among the various communicating devices within wireless sensor networks during broadcasting is most significant among the other primary security services. This authentication during broadcasting services allows multiple mobile end‐devices to transmit messages dynamically and securely for fasten consumer tracking and sustaining privacy of the data transferred in the insecure sensor network. To enhance this authentication protocol for secure end‐users message distribution, this research work has introduced a novel identity (ID) based cryptographic technique that employs ElGmal‐elliptic‐curve cryptography and digital signature without implementing bilinear paring operation to reduce huge burden of computation overhead. Additionally, to accelerate the performance of the proposed authentication protocol, the size of the signature along with the encryption key is minimized. Eventually, the authentication protocol provides comparatively less computational complexity with secure and faster key management. The performance analysis supports the aforesaid claim as well as reflects the supremacy of the proposed scheme over the handover authentication protocol and bilinear pairings based authentication schemes.

FastHand: A fast handover authentication protocol for densely deployed small-cell networks

Dense deployment of small-cell base stations is crucial to improve the system capacity of the evolving mobile network. However, more frequent handovers may take place as the signal coverage of such cells are very limited. Hence, a fast handover authentication protocol is essential to accomplish seamless mobility and uninterrupted service. Traditional public key-based protocols are not suitable for small-cell networks due to their high computation and communication overheads. Besides, the security of the symmetric key-based protocols is strongly dependent on a preshared long-term secret key or group key, where each node in the network needs to maintain a copy of the key. Hence, the system security may not be guaranteed in case of a node compromised attack. In this article, we propose a fast handover authentication protocol for densely deployed small-cell networks, named FastHand. FastHand is based on symmetric key cryptography, thus achieving relatively low computation and communication overheads than traditional public key-based authentication protocols. FastHand employs a (t,n)-threshold scheme to compute the handover key. The handover key can only be computed if at least t out of n legitimate nodes cooperate in parallel. Thus, the system security will not be affected in case of a node compromised attack. The privacy and security properties of FastHand are verified through informal and formal proofs. Finally, FastHand is compared with other similar protocols to measure its security and efficiency.

Design of Blockchain-Based Lightweight V2I Handover Authentication Protocol for VANET

Connected vehicle means providing different services, such as advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) from vehicles connected to the network. Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) can support vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications to realize connected vehicle. In VANETs, secure communication must be ensured, as otherwise it can lead to traffic accidents and human injuries. Recently, many studies on V2I authentication have been conducted to guarantee the security of V2I communications. However, recent V2I authentication protocols do not consider the handover situation, and it causes unnecessary computations. As vehicles have limited computing resources, unnecessary computation can lead to overload to the vehicles. In recent years, blockchain-based VANET is an active field of research because it can provide decentralization, data integrity and transparency. Using the strength of the blockchain technology, we design a blockchain-based handover authentication protocol for VANETs. In the proposed protocol, vehicles only perform lightweight computations in handover situations for efficiency of the network. We also conduct the formal analysis such as Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, Real-Or-Random (ROR) oracle model, and Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation to the proposed protocol. We simulate the proposed protocol using network simulator 3 (NS-3) to verify that the proposed protocol is practical. Finally, we compare the computational cost and security features of the proposed protocol with existing protocols to show that the proposed protocol is more secure and efficient.

Untraceable Authentication Protocol for IEEE802.11s Standard

In the current paper, a new handover authentication protocol for IEEE802.11s Wireless mesh networks is presented. The new protocol divides the network into a number of cells, each cell contains a number of access points and based on the concept of ticket authentication, the mesh user takes a new ticket when enters the region of a new cell which decreases the handover latency. Moreover, in the current paper, a new idea for ticket generation is proposed, called Chain Ticket Derivation Function (CTDF), which uses the concept of a chain. Using CTDF in our proposed protocol raises the level of privacy for the users. The security analysis presented in the paper showed more strengths in our proposed scheme. Two formal verification tools, AVISPA and BAN logic are used to test the proposed protocol.

A privacy-preserving handover authentication protocol for a group of MTC devices in 5G networks

Machine Type Communication (MTC) has been emerging for a wide range of applications and services for the Internet of Things (IoT). In some scenarios, a large group of MTC devices (MTCDs) may enter the communication coverage of a new target base station simultaneously. However, the current handover mechanism specified by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 16 incurs high signaling overhead over the access network and the core network for such scenario. Moreover, other existing solutions have several security problems in terms of the failure of key forward secrecy (KFS) and lack of mutual authentication. In this paper, we propose an efficient authentication protocol for a group of MTCDs in all handover scenarios. By the proposal, the messages from two MTCDs are concatenated with an aggregated message authentication code (MAC) and sent by an authenticated group member to reduce the signaling cost. The proposed protocol has been formally evaluated by Scyther tool to prove its security. And it has been analysed on its security functionality to show its ability to resist major typical malicious attacks. Temporary identities of MTCDs have been used to preserve users’ privacy. It can be expected that the proposed protocol is applicable to all kinds of group mobility scenarios such as a platoon of vehicles or a high-speed train. The performance evaluation demonstrates that the proposed protocol is efficient in terms of computational, communication, signaling, and energy cost.

An efficient anonymous group handover authentication protocol for MTC devices for 5G networks

Machine Type Communication (MTC) has been emerging for a wide range of applications and services for the Internet of Things (IoT). In some scenarios, a large group of MTC devices (MTCDs) may enter the communication coverage of a new target base station simultaneously. However, the current handover mechanism specified by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) incur high signalling overhead over the access network and the core network for such scenario. Moreover, other existing solutions have several security problems in terms of failure of key forward secrecy (KFS) and lack of mutual authentication. In this paper, we propose an efficient authentication protocol for a group of MTCDs in all handover scenarios. By the proposal, the messages of two MTCDs are concatenated and sent by an authenticated group member to reduce the signalling cost. The proposed protocol has been analysed on its security functionality to show its ability to preserve user privacy and resist from major typical malicious attacks. It can be expected that the proposed scheme is applicable to all kinds of group mobility scenarios such as a platoon of vehicles or a high-speed train. The performance evaluation demonstrates that the proposed protocol is efficient in terms of computational and signalling cost.

Untraceable Authentication Protocol for IEEE802.11s Standard

In the current paper, a new handover authentication protocol for IEEE802.11s Wireless mesh networks is presented. The new protocol divides the network into a number of cells, each cell contains a number of access points and based on the concept of ticket authentication, the mesh user takes a new ticket when enters the region of a new cell which decreases the handover latency. Moreover, in the current paper, a new idea for ticket generation is proposed, called Chain Ticket Derivation Function (CTDF), which uses the concept of a chain. Using CTDF in our proposed protocol raises the level of privacy for the users. The security analysis presented in the paper showed more strengths in our proposed scheme. Two formal verification tools, AVISPA and BAN logic are used to test the proposed protocol.

A lightweight and secure handover authentication scheme for 5G network using neighbour base stations

The emerge of fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks has started a new era of the development of wireless mobile networks. Security of the 5G wireless networks is the major concern when they are deployed for commercial applications. The third-generation partnership project (3GPP) has specified the security functionality of 5G wireless in its standard release 16. However, it is prone to different attacks such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and false base-station attacks. Particularly, secure handover becomes a critical issue in the operation of the 5G mobile networks. In the paper, we propose an efficient and secure handover authentication protocol using the Chinese remainder theory at neighbour base stations, gNodeBs (gNBs) for secure handovers. The security of the proposal is formally evaluated to demonstrate its ability against various malicious attacks. The performance of the proposed scheme in terms of the delay incurred and energy consumption is evaluated by using JAVA simulation. The results obtained show that our scheme is secure and efficient with relatively low energy consumption, which is suitable for devices in high-speed movements.