Security for software defined radio terminals
AssigneeTelefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson (publ)
InventorsMats Naslund, Magnus Almgren, Harald Kallin, Goran Selander
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Abstract
A module (2) for integrity protection of messages transmitted from a mobile software defined radio (SDR) terminal (1), the module provided with a confined cryptographic key K and arranged to receive loaded SDR-code. The module derives an integrity protecting key Rk from at least said cryptographic key K, and provides a periodic integrity protection on-line of generated messages using said key integrity protecting key Rk, and the integrity of said messages is verified by an integrity checking node (10) of the access network.
Claims40
An SDR-protecting module (2) for an SDR terminal (1), said module provided with a confined cryptographic key K and arranged to receive loaded SDR-code, characterized in that the SDR-protecting module is further arranged to derive an integrity protecting key Rk from at least said cryptographic key K, and to provide a periodic integrity protection on-line of generated SDR-functionality messages using said key integrity protecting key Rk, the integrity of said messages to be verified by an integrity checking node (10) in the access network.
An SDR-protecting module according to any of the preceding claims, wherein a copy of said cryptographic key K is stored in a terminal register unit (5) in the home network.
An SDR-protecting module (2) according to any of the preceding claims, wherein said SDR-functionality messages comprises radio signal measurement reports.
An SDR-protecting module (2) according to any of the preceding claims, wherein said integrity protection involves a control plane signalling unit (8) calculating a message authenticating checksum using said integrity protecting key Rk obtained from said module (2), said message authenticating checksum to be added to said message before transmission.
An SDR-protecting module according to any of the preceding claims, wherein said SDR functionality messages are associated with the RRC-layer.
An SDR-protecting module according to any of the preceding claims, wherein said SDR-functionality messages are associated with the MAC-layer.
An SDR protecting module according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the SDR protecting module is arranged to receive SDR-code loaded directly from an SDR code storage (3) and to verify the correctness of the loaded SDR-code.
An SDR protecting module, according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the SDR protecting module is further arranged to include information derived from the security key of the SIM or USIM (4) of the SDR terminal in the calculation of the integrity protection key Rk.
An SDR protecting module, according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the SDR protecting module provides an execution environment (12) for at least a part of the RRC-signalling generation and processing.
An SDR protecting module, according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the module is implemented at least partly as a hardware module.
An SDR terminal (1), comprising at least one SDR protecting module (2), according to any of the preceding claims.
A method of integrity protecting SDR-functionality software using an SDR protecting module (2) provided with a confined cryptographic key K, the method characterized by the SDR-protecting module performing the following steps:
- Receiving (31) loaded SDR code;
- Deriving (32) an integrity protection key Rk from at least said cryptographic key K;
- Providing a periodic on-line integrity protection (35) of SDR-functionality messages by the derived integrity protection key Rk, the integrity of the messages to be verified (36) by an integrity checking node in the access network.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.