A Network Assisted End-To-End Security Protocol For Mobile Applications

Supporting end-to-end mutual authentication and secure communication between a mobile device and a remote application, over the Internet, is an interesting research topic due to users' mobility, mobile device resource limitations and potentially large number of service providers that a mobile user may get in touch with. This paper presents a novel Network Assisted End-To-End Security (NAETES) protocol that integrates security solutions provided by wireless operators and the Internet backbone. The protocol achieves end-to-end mutual authentication between a mobile user and a service provider, and establishes a secret session key to secure subsequent communications between the two entities. The design of the protocol is such that it shifts some of the computationally expensive cryptographic operations onto the mobile device's network operator, so as to reduce computational load on the mobile device. The protocol has an inherent accountability service to ensure the accountability of the entities involved, namely, the mobile device, its network operator, and the service provider. As a result, the protocol achieves the specified security services with less computational load at the mobile side than related protocols.