Paper 2013/027 Original: eprint.iacr.org/2013/027 ↗

Anonymity Guarantees of the UMTS/LTE Authentication and Connection Protocol

Ming-Feng Lee
Nigel P. Smart
Bogdan Warinschi
Gaven Watson
Abstract

The UMTS/LTE protocol for mobile phone networks has been designed to offer a limited form of anonymity for mobile phone uses. In this paper we quantify precisely what this limited form of anonymity actually provides via a formal security model. The model considers an execution where the home and roaming network providers are considered as one entity. We consider two forms of anonymity, one where the mobile stations under attacked are statically selected before the execution, and a second one where the adversary selects these stations adaptively. We prove that the UMTS/LTE protocol meets both of these security definitions. Our analysis requires new assumptions on the underlying keyed functions for UMTS, which whilst probably true have not previously been brought to the fore.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Applications
Publication info
Preprint.
History
2014-02-11: last updated
2013-01-24: published
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2013/027
License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2013/027,
      author = {Ming-Feng Lee and Nigel P.  Smart and Bogdan Warinschi and Gaven Watson},
      title = {Anonymity Guarantees of the UMTS/LTE Authentication  and Connection Protocol},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2013/027},
      year = {2013},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/027}
}
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