Improving Security Levels of IEEE802.16e Authentication by Involving Diffie-Hellman PKDS Yi-Li Huang (Department of Computer Science, TungHai University, Taichung, Taiwan yifung@mail.tbcnet.net) Fang-Yie Leu (Department of Computer Science, TungHai University, Taichung, Taiwan leufy@thu.edu.tw) Chao-Hong Chiu (Department of Computer Science, TungHai University, Taichung, Taiwan g97357015@thu.edu.tw) I-Long Lin (Department of Information Management, Central Police University, Taipei, Taiwan paul@mail.cpu.edu.tw) Abstract: Recently, IEEE 802.16 Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX for short) has provided us with low-cost, high efficiency and high bandwidth network services. However, as with the WiFi, the radio wave transmission also makes the WiMAX face the wireless transmission security problem. To solve this problem, the IEEE802.16Std during its development stage defines the Privacy Key Management (PKM for short) authentication process which offers a one-way authentication. However, using a one-way authentication, an SS may connect to a fake BS. Mutual authentication, like that developed for PKMv2, can avoid this problem. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an authentication key management approach, called Diffie-Hellman-PKDS-based authentication method (DiHam for short), which employs a secret door asymmetric one-way function, Public Key Distribution System (PKDS for short), to improve current security level of facility authentication between WiMAX’s BS and SS. We further integrate the PKMv1 and the DiHam into a system, called PKM-DiHam (P-DiHam for short), in which the PKMv1 acts as the authentication process, and the DiHam is responsible for key management and delivery. By transmitting securely protected and well-defined parameters for SS and BS, the two stations can mutually authenticate each other. Messages including those conveying user data and authentication parameters can be then more securely delivered. Keywords: Diffie-Hellman PKDS, Common secret key, PKMv1, WiMAX security, IEEE802.16e data security Categories: C.2.3, K.6.5, H.4.3 1 Introduction In a wireless network, what the users need are generally greater bandwidth, speedy transmission, uninterrupted services and more secure environment. Although WiMAX has farther transmission distance and faster speed than those of IEEE802.11 Journal of Universal Computer Science, vol. 17, no. 6 (2011), 891-911 submitted: 15/5/10, accepted: 30/11/10, appeared: 28/3/11 © J.UCS