Packet Replays Prevention Protocol for Secure B5G Networks

The beyond 5G networks (B5G) are characterized by high throughputs at extremely low latencies and better energy consumptions. This has seen them being deployed as the backbone of numerous Internet of Things (IoT) application domains such as smart homes, smart cities and in intelligent transport systems. Massive and private data flows in these ultra-dense networks and hence the need to protect them. As such, the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has defined Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocols for secure signaling and packet exchanges in these networks. However, these AKA protocols are susceptible to numerous attacks, such as impersonation and packet replays. This has seen the development of numerous schemes based on techniques such as public key cryptography, biometrics, group signatures and blockchain. Unfortunately, these schemes fail to offer the required levels of security and privacy protection at low execution time, energy and bandwidths. In this paper, a protocol is developed that leverages on the message authentication codes, symmetric cryptography and elliptic curve cryptography. It is shown that the proposed protocol is secure under the Dolev–Yao model. In terms of performance, it exhibited the lowest execution time and has the lowest bandwidth requirements.