A New Approach to Improving the Security of the 5G-AKA Using Crystals-Kyber Post-Quantum Technologies and ASCON Algorithm

The 5G-AKA protocol includes several vulnerabilities related to security and privacy.This paper proposes improving the standard 5G-AKA protocol by enhancing security and privacy, such as optimal forward secrecy, resilience against linkability attacks, and protection against malicious SN networks.The proposed protocol, called KyberPQ-AKA, includes two stages of development.In the first stage, a Crystals-Kyber KEM-based method creates keys and safely exchanges them within the AKA protocol environment.In the second stage, the lightweight encryption algorithm ASCON replaces traditional encryption in the protocol to work on devices with limited resources.Moreover, key encapsulation (KEM) mechanisms improve the protection of user identity and complete privacy.KyberPQ-AKA makes it easier to adapt to a quantum-secure environment and provides additional security and authentication benefits by switching from the AES encryption algorithm to the lightweight ASCON algorithm.KEM Crystals-Kyber postquantum, a criterion NIST recently chose, and KEM candidates for the fourth round after quantum from NIST used in the suggested protocol.The results on connection and calculation costs indicate that the KyberPQ-AKA protocol is practical and superior to standard 5G-AKA.We also proved the security of KyberPQ-5G using the ProVerif tool and by applying the protocol using Mininet with RYU Controller to test the protocol.The results proved this in comparison with the standard 5G-AKA protocol.