Post-Quantum Secure Lattice-Based 5G-AKA Protocol Resistant to Malicious Serving Networks with Perfect Forward Secrecy
Awaneesh Kumar Yadav, Eshika Choudhary, Onkar Garg, Madhusanka Liyanage · 2025
5G communication enables digital innovation by integrating a wide range of services, making security, especially primary authentication, critically important. To secure 5G communication, the 3GPP has designed the 5G Authentication and Key Agreement (5G-AKA) protocol. However, current trends show a growing interest in post-quantum security, and 5G-AKA is not resistant to quantum-era threats due to several classical vulnerabilities. To address these limitations, various enhanced versions of 5G-AKA have been proposed, claiming to provide security against attacks that exploit its weaknesses. However, state-of-the-art research reveals that many of these versions remain susceptible to classical threats, such as attacks from malicious serving networks (SNs), ephemeral secret leakage (ESL) attacks, and fail to provide perfect forward secrecy. Additionally, they are not secure against quantum attacks. In response to these challenges, we propose a Post-Quantum Secure, Lattice-Based 5G-AKA Protocol that is resistant to malicious serving networks and ensures perfect forward secrecy. Our proposed protocol is built on lattice-based cryptography, making it one of the first 5G-AKA variants designed with post-quantum security in mind. We validate the security of our protocol using formal verification techniques, including the Real-Or-Random (ROR) model and the Scyther tool. Furthermore, we perform a comparative analysis with existing protocols to highlight the improvements. Finally, we implement our protocol in a testbed environment to demonstrate its practical feasibility for real-time 5G applications.