Providing End-To-End Secure Communications in GSM Networks

Abstract

The broadcast nature of radio medium in GSM networks makes them more vulnerable to various attacks. Any attacker can have complete control over the communication channel, listen to phone calls, read email, and spy on whatever data has been sent via GSM mobile communication system. This paper introduces a middleware security system that aims to protect the GSM communication channel and minimize the computational overheads of the provided authentication and cryptographic schemes of the network The proposed scheme supports an end-to-end secured communication between the GSM mobile devices and the GSM base stations; insure compatibility between wireless GSM devices (telephones, PDAs, etc.), and easy to install without any modification of the current systems KEYWORDS