A secure and effective scheme providing comprehensive forward security to LTE/SAE X2 handover key management

The commercialization of LTE/SAE technologies has begun a new era in which data can be transmitted at remarkably high rates. The security of the LTE/SAE network, however, remains problematic. The forward security in LTE/SAE X2 handover key management can be threatened by key compromise and de-synchronization attacks as base station in public spaces can be compromised. This study was conducted to address the lack of forward key security in X2 handover key management in scenarios in which an adversary controls a legal base station. We developed the proposed X2 handover key management by changing the parameter in the renewing step and adding a verification step. We compare the security and performance of our proposal with other similar schemes. Our enhancement scheme ensures forward separation security accompanied by favorable signal and computation load performance. Keywords: X2 handover, forward security, LTE/SAE