Secure Mobile IPv6 for B3G Networks

The rapid spread of new radio access technologies, the ever increasing requirements for security, as well as the required capability for the final users to experience continuous connectivity and uninterrupted services of IP applications as they move about from one access network to another, has stimulated the technical and scientific community to investigate future evolution scenarios for 3G networks, generically referred to as Beyond-3G or 4G. Key issues are certainly security provision for applications exchanging data in diverse wireless networks and seamless mobility (handoff) between different coverage domains and, possibly, access technologies. Many proposals are based on the use of the Mobile IPv6 protocol. In this paper we analyse the security threats emerging from some MIPv6 mechanisms for mobility management and we propose a solution to secure them, under the assumption that both communicating end users are attached to a MIPv6-enabled IP Multimedia Subsystem network.