An Efficient Stream Cipher WG-16 and its Application for Securing 4G-LTE Networks

Abstract

The fourth generation of mobile telecommunications system (marketed as 4G-LTE) is being commercially and widely deployed. Security mechanisms are crucial to protect communications of mobile users from potential malicious attacks as well as to ensure revenue for 4G-LTE network operators. The randomness properties of the keystream generated by the current cipher suites in 4G-LTE standard are difficult to analyze and some vulnerabilities with regard to the integrity algorithms have been recently discovered. To address those issues, we present a detailed specification and security analysis of a bit-oriented stream cipher WG-16 as well as the corresponding confidentiality and integrity algorithms in this paper. Our experimental results on smartphones and comparisons with the cipher suites in 4G-LTE standard demonstrate that WG-16 is a competitive candidate for securing the emerging 4G-LTE networks.