Authentication and Secure Communication in GSM, GPRS, and UMTS Using Asymmetric Cryptography

With its great features like providing access to users at anytime and anywhere in the world, mobile communication has been very attractive among the users as well as operators and service providers. However, despite of several advantages, mobile communication has also been facing many security problems. In 2G and 3G technologies like GSM, GPRS and UMTS, the architectures comprise of mainly three nodes; the mobile station (MS), Visitor Location Register/Serving GPRS Support Node (VLR/SGSN), and Home Location Register /Authentication Center (HLR/AuC). These nodes are involved to encrypt/decrypt the data and authenticate the user (MS) in GSM, GPRS and UMTS. To provide security services like authentication and secure communication, the mechanism has been moved from symmetric cryptography to, despite of its complexity, asymmetric cryptography. To reduce the signaling overhead and add some other security features, we propose a new generalized approach in this paper. This is based on asymmetric cryptography for user/network authentication and communication encryption in GSM/GPRS and UMTS with reduced signaling overhead.