Dynamic ID randomization for user privacy in mobile network

Abstract

Mobile and telecommunication networking uses temporary and random identifiers (IDs) to protect user privacy. For greater intelligence and security the communications between the core network and the mobile user, we design and build a dynamic randomization scheme for the temporary IDs for mobile networking, including 5G and 6G. Our work for ID randomization (ID-RZ) advances the existing state-of-the-art ID re-allocation approach in 5G in the following ways. First, ID-RZ for ID updates is based on computing, as opposed to incurring networking for the re-allocation-based updates, and is designed for lightweight and low-latency mobile systems. Second, ID-RZ changes IDs proactively (as opposed to updating based on explicit networking event triggers) and provides stronger security (by increasing the randomness and frequency of ID updates). We build on the standard cryptographic primitives for security (e.g., hash) and implement our dynamic randomization scheme in the 5G networking protocol to validate its design purposes, which include time efficiency (two to four orders of magnitude quicker than the re-allocation approach) and appropriateness for mobile applications.

Keywords

• cellular networking
• low latency
• mobile computing
• 5g
• 6g
• temporary id
• user privacy