Improved EndSec: A Practical Protocol for Securing Core Network Signaling in UMTS

The offered services in the third generation of mobile communication (UMTS) have necessitated the existence of reliable network security. The original core network security protocol called MapSec only provides the security for Map signaling and is unable to assure the end-to-end security. One of the proposed solutions to these shortcomings is the EndSec protocol which is computationally complex and increases the significantly increses the signaling load on the link. We also show that EndSec is susceptible against a kind of active attack. In this paper, in addition to explaining the EndSec pitfalls, we present an enhancement using bilinear maps which resolves all the mentioned drawbacks.