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 a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland, since January 2023. He graduated from the 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 and awaits his viva. 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 has authored / co-authored various book chapters, international journals, magazine articles, and conference papers. He is currently conducting collaborative research with researchers at IIT-India, University of Oulu-Finland, and University of Ruhuna-Sri Lanka. He is a member of the research groups of Netslab, PEL based on UCD and University of Oulu. Pasika is focused on enhancing the security measures in 5G and beyond 5G mobile networks, while his main research focus is directed to Federated Learning based security issues and how to overcome them utilizing Blockchain. His additional research directives extend to the areas of lightweight security protocols, formal verification, security and 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).
