BC-AKA: Blockchain based asymmetric authentication and key agreement protocol for distributed 5G core network
Zhen Gao, Dongbin Zhang, Jiuzhi Zhang, Zhao Liu, Haoming Liu, Ming Zhao
Abstract
Secure authentication between user equipment and 5G core network is a critical issue for 5G system. However, the traditional authentication protocol 5G-AKA and the centralized key database are at risk of several security problems, e.g. key leakage, impersonation attack, MitM attack and single point of failure. In this paper, a blockchain based asymmetric authentication and key agreement protocol (BC-AKA) is proposed for distributed 5G core network. In particular, the key used in the authentication process is replaced from a symmetric key to an asymmetric key, and the database used to store keys in conventional 5G core network is replaced with a blockchain network. A proof of concept system for distributed 5G core network is built based on Ethereum and ECC-Secp256k1, and the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed scheme are verified by the experiment results.