DMM-SEP: Secure and Efficient Protocol for Distributed Mobility Management based on 5G Networks

In the 5G era, network mobility management is recognized as a very important factor for user service availability. Especially, due to fast speed and shrinking cell coverage, frequent handover is expected than before. Hence, efficient handover procedure is essential to guarantee seamless service to users. Distributed IP Mobility Management (DMM), a major mobility management solution, is a flat architecture that achieves efficiency and fault tolerance by excluding a centralized anchor and minimizing the distance between a mobile device and its serving network. However, DMM, which has no dominant security scheme specified to itself, is excessively dependent on the security of Layer 2 and is vulnerable to various threats. Especially, the existing security schemes are still venerable to redirection attacks launched by malicious Mobile Access Gateways (MAGs) or Control Mobility Database (CMD). Motivated by this, we proposed a DMM-based handover security protocol that can support privacy and defend against redirection attacks in addition to providing essential security properties such as confidentiality, integrity, mutual authentication, and key exchange. The proposed protocol was formally verified to be correct through AVISPA and BAN logic. Moreover, the comparison analysis showed that the proposed protocol is better than the previous studies and standards.