Mobile IP registration protocol: a security attack and new secure minimal public-key based authentication

Abstract

The ubiquity of the Internet and explosive growth in wireless networking in recent years increasingly urge the demand to support mobility within the Internet, which is what Mobile IP aims to provide. This paper is concerned with the security aspect of the registration protocol in Mobile IP. In this paper, we show that despite the use of authenicated registration messages and replay protection, the current registration protocol suffers from a possible replay attack. The paper also analyzes a proposed extension of Mobile IP that aims to provide public-key based authentication. We show some drawbacks in its protocol design and then propose our own new secure authentication protocol that employs only minimal use of public key cryptography. Despite its practicality, our new protocol provides a scalable solution for authentication and non-repudiation, while sets only minimal computing and administration cost on the Mobile Node.