Implementation of Base Station Identity Authentication using BBS Signatures

Abstract

In the evolution of mobile communication systems, security is keeping enhancement. The security evolution involves the process of one-way authentication used in the second generation (2G) systems, and two-way authentication used in the third generation (3G) systems and beyond. However, there are still many security issues that have not been properly resolved, which might result from the attacks by rough base stations. To mitigate such attacks, this thesis proposes using the BBS signature, which is introduced by D. Boneh, X. Boyen and H. Shacham, in the base station identity authentication procedure. By changing the base station broadcast message SIB, in which the BBS signature is added, the User Equipment can perform authentication process before attaching to the base station, thereby mitigating the security issues resulted from rogue base stations. There are two BBS signature schemes proposed in this thesis and their implementation as well as experiment results are also demonstrated.