A secure communication architecture for GSM networks

Abstract

With the advance of wireless communications technology, mobile communications has become more convenient than ever. However, because of the openness of wireless communications, how to protect the privacy between communication parties is becoming a very important issue. In this paper, we focus on the security of the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) networks. A secure communication architecture for the GSM network is proposed. In the proposed architecture, we use public-key cryptography for user authentication and a stream cipher for message encryption and decryption. This architecture significantly improves the security of today's GSM networks.