Secure Mobility Protocols for Cross-Network Wireless Handoffs

Today, mobile phones and other portable devices switch between Wi-Fi, cellular, and even 5G networks. Not only mobile networks, but other networks need to switch as well. While these transitions help to keep services running smoothly, they are usually the endpoints for malicious activities conducted by cyber criminals. This document looks into the dangers of the security gaps cross-network wireless transitions create and proposes a framework that aims to secure transitions of mobile devices between networks with minimal impact on latency and throughput. Our model combines context-aware authentication with predictive mobility to model trust channel setups for anticipated handoff events. Using model-based simulations and real-world testbed experiments, the designed protocol achieved lower authentication delays and packet loss when compared to baseline models. In addition, the protocol showed that it was able to defend against many mobility-based attacks such as session hijacking and rogue AP infiltration. The results demonstrate that in this era of mobile computing, adaptive mobility protocols need to be implemented for the devices to ensure that the data information and user’s privacy is kept safe.