Authentication and Encryption in GSM and 3GUMTS: An Emphasis on Protocols and Algorithms

Abstract: Mobile communication touches every aspect of our life, it become one of the major dependencies that the 21st Century civilizations rely on. Thereby, security is a major issue that should be targeted by communication technologies. In this paper we will target authentication and encryption in GSM and 3G/UMTS. In order to understand clearly how things work, we will start by presenting the architecture of each network, its major components, its authentication algorithms, protocols used, and KASUMI Block Cipher.