Authentication and Encryption in GSM and 3GUMTS: An Emphasis on Protocols and Algorithms

Abstract

Mobile communication touches every aspect of our life, it become one of the major dependencies that the 21st Century civilizations rely on. Thereby, security is a major issue that should be targeted by communication technologies. In this paper we will target authentication and encryption in GSM and 3G/UMTS. In order to understand clearly how things work, we will start by presenting the architecture of each network, its major components, its authentication algorithms, protocols used, and KASUMI Block Cipher.