Shared key vulnerability in IEEE 802.16e: Analysis & solution

Abstract

As a promising broadband wireless technology, WiMAX has many salient advantages over such as: high data rates, quality of service, scalability, security and mobility. Many sophisticated authentication and encryption techniques have been embedded into WiMAX but it still facing a lot of challenging situations. This paper shows different security vulnerabilities found in IEEE 802.16e and gives possible solutions to eliminate them. These vulnerabilities are the possibilities to forge key messages in Multi- and Broadcast operation, some unauthenticated messages which are susceptible to forgery and the unencrypted management communication which reveals important management information. We modify DH key exchange protocol to fit it into mobile WiMAX network as well as eliminate existing weakness in original DH key exchange protocol.