Service Migration Authentication Protocol for MEC
- Post by: Pasika Ranaweera, Awaneesh Kumar Yadav, Madhusanka Liyanage and Anca Delia Jurcut
- December 7, 2022
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Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) is a novel edge computing paradigm that enhances the access level capacity of mobile networks by shifting the serviceable Data center infrastructure proximate to the end devices. With this proximate placement and service provisioning, migration of a service from one edge enabled gNodeB (gNB) to another is intrinsic to maintain the service continuity. Since such services are migrated through the channel shared between the gNBs, proper security measures should be inhibited by the communication protocol to prevent any unauthorized interception. Further, each gNB should ensure the legitimacy of the migrating gNBs to avoid any impersonation attempts. As this is an area that lacks focus in current research trends, this paper introduces MEC Service Migration Authentication Protocol (MEC-SMAP), a protocol that take place prior to the migration initiation, and specifically defined for MEC. The proposed protocol ensures the secure transfer of session key generation parameters to form a secure channel while ensuring perfect forward secrecy. It introduces an identity verification mechanism through a trusted third party service. We have validated the proposed protocol through formal analysis using GNY logic and Scyther tool. Further, a prototype virtualized MEC environment was created to evaluate its feasibility and the impact of the employed security mechanisms.
Pasika Ranaweera is an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering in University College Dublin from September 2023. He was a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the UCD School of Computer Science in 2023. He was the project manager of the CONFIDENTIAL-6G project, funded by the EU H2022-SNS grant id: 101096435, during this profession. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Electrical and Information Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, in 2010 with honors and received the Lanekassen scholarship for pursuing the Master’s Degree in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in 2013 from the University of Agder, Norway. Pasika completed his Ph.D. from University College Dublin, Ireland, on improving the security of service migrations of MEC in 2023. Prior to his Ph.D., he served as a lecturer attached to the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, from 2014 to 2018. Pasika is experienced in conducting teaching/ instructing/ demonstration work at international universities (UCD-Ireland, BDIC-China). He is currently conducting collaborative research with researchers at IIT-India, the University of Oulu-Finland, and the University of Ruhuna-Sri Lanka. Pasika is focused on enhancing the security measures in 5G and beyond 5G mobile networks, while his main research focus is directed at Federated Learning-based security issues and how to overcome them utilizing Blockchain. His additional research directives extend to lightweight security protocols, formal verification, security, service quality optimization, 5G and MEC integration technologies (SDN, NFV, Blockchain), privacy preservation techniques, and IoT security. In addition to the research work, he serves as a reviewer for IEEE IoT journal, IEEE Access, IEEE Communication Magazine, IEEE IoT Magazine, SN Computer Science, and various IEEE-hosted conferences and workshops under the IEEE Communication Society (also a member of IEEE ComSoc).
