An Enhanced Cross-Network-Slice Authentication Protocol for 5G

Network slicing is considered one of the key technologies in future telecommunication networks as it can split the physical network into a number of logical networks tailored to diverse purposes that allow users to access various services speedily. The fifth-generation (5G) mobile network can support a variety of applications by using network slicing. However, security (especially authentication) is a significant issue when users access the network slice-based services. Various authentication schemes are designed to secure access, and only a few offer cross-network slice authentication. The security analysis of existing cross-network authentication schemes shows they are vulnerable to several attacks such as device stolen, ephemeral secret leakage, violation of perfect forward secrecy, identity theft. Therefore, we propose an authentication mechanism that offers cross-network slice authentication and prevents all the aforementioned vulnerabilities. The security verification of the authentication mechanism is carried out informally and formally (ROR logic and Scyther tool) to ensure that it handles all the vulnerabilities. The comparison of empirical evaluation shows that the proposed scheme is least costly than its competitors. Java-based implementations of the proposed protocols imitate a real environment, showing that our proposed protocol maintains almost the same performance as state-of-the-art solutions while providing additional security features.