This article is part of the series Multimedia Communications over Next Generation Wireless Networks.

Open Access Research Article

Novel Approaches to Enhance Mobile WiMAX Security

Taeshik Shon1, Bonhyun Koo1, JongHyuk Park2 and Hangbae Chang3*

Author Affiliations

1 Convergence S/W Laboratory, DMC R&D Center, Samsung Electronics, Dong Suwon P.O. Box 105, Maetan-3dong, Suwon-si, Gyeonggi-do, 442-600, Republic of Korea

2 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Seoul National University of Technology, 172, Gongreung 2-dong, Nowon, Seoul 139-743, Republic of Korea

3 Department of Business Administration, Daejin University, San 11-1, Sundan-Dong, Pocheon-Si, Gyunggi-Do 487-711, Republic of Korea

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EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking 2010, 2010:926275  doi:10.1155/2010/926275


The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://jwcn.eurasipjournals.com/content/2010/1/926275


Received: 26 February 2010
Accepted: 5 July 2010
Published: 20 July 2010

© 2010 Taeshik Shon et al.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The IEEE 802.16 Working Group on Broadband Wireless Access Standards released IEEE 802.16-2004 which is a standardized technology for supporting broadband and wireless communication with fixed and nomadic access. After the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard, a new advanced and revised standard was released as the IEEE 802.16e-2005 amendment which is foundation of Mobile WiMAX network supporting handover and roaming capabilities. In the area of security aspects, compared to IEEE 802.16-2004, IEEE 802.16e, called Mobile WiMAX, adopts improved security architecture—PKMv2 which includes EAP authentication, AES-based authenticated encryption, and CMAC or HMAC message protection. However, there is no guarantee that PKMv2-based Mobile WiMAX network will not have security flaws. In this paper, we investigate the current Mobile WiMAX security architecture focusing mainly on pointing out new security vulnerabilities such as a disclosure of security context in network entry, a lack of secure communication in network domain, and a necessity of efficient handover supporting mutual authentication. Based on the investigation results, we propose a novel Mobile WiMAX security architecture, called RObust and Secure MobilE WiMAX (ROSMEX), to prevent the new security vulnerabilities.

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