A formal analysis of authentication protocols for mobile devices in next generation networks

Summary Next Generation Networks comprise a wide variety of access technologies such as 2G/3G, WLAN as well as the Long‐Term Evolution (LTE) networks. In this environment, mobile devices are expected to store sensitive data and represent users to access the underlying networks and connect to a wide variety of sensitive servers. It is crucial, in this sense, for end users to trust their mobile devices and for all transactions using them to be secure. Therefore, a number of communication frameworks in Next Generation Networks have been working on designing device authentication protocols that achieve mutual authentication between users and mobile terminals. This paper analyses some of these protocols and introduces two new device authentication protocols, verifies them using formal methods approach and discusses how they achieved desired security proprieties. The performance analysis highlights another advantage of the proposed protocols.