Enhanced authentication and key agreement protocol for improving security in UMTS networks

The UMTS networks (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) constitute an evolution of mobile systems in terms of data speed, capacity and new service capabilities in comparison with Second generation mobile networks (2G), and provide a better Security Mechanism for wireless access to 3G services. The authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocol is the One of these mechanisms, and it is the essence to authenticate a user to the network and vice versa through to the authentication vectors generated by the authentication center (AuC) in the user´s Home Network. This is possible by means of the preshared secret key K stored both in the Authentication Center (AuC) and the UMTS Subscriber Identity Module (USIM). The other parameters are derived from this key. This paper describes a new security plan to surmount the issues mentioned above, which proposes an secureand efficient authentication between the User Equipment (UE) and the home networks, this protocol khnown Enhanced AKA (EAKA). The EAKA uses a temporary key to allow visitor location register serving network and (VLR/ SN) to authenticate the User Equipment (UE) without intervention by HLR / AuC.