Secure 4G SEPS-AKA Protocol for UMTS Networks

User authentication is one of the crucial challenges that has to be addressed in UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service) in order to grant the access to the services during handovers. Therefore, to provide the authentication the proposed protocol makes use of the existing Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP). To provide the authentication in the LTE networks, an authentication framework EAP is used. EAPAKA is one of the methods of EAP framework. EAP-AKA, uses the mechanism Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA). EAPAKA is used in UMTS networks to secure the communication channel. In LTE, this mechanism is called as Evolved Packet System Authentication and Key Agreement (EPS-AKA). Mobile users in LTE networks access the packet data network through Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (EUTRAN). However, with the thorough literature survey, it is proved that EPS-AKA mechanism is susceptible to the security vulnerabilities such as disclosure of the user identity, Man in the Middle attack and replay attacks. To overcome these security attacks, a new Secure Evolved Packet System (SEPS) protocol has been proposed. The formal security verification of the proposed SEPS protocol using widely accepted AVISPA (Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications) tool is presented in this paper. In addition to this, the proposed protocol is compared with the other protocols in terms of performance. The proposed SEPS protocol is efficient and robust. This makes the proposed protocol suitable for the practical implementation.