Secure authentication-key management system and method for mobile communications

Abstract

A system and method for enabling sensitive authentication information to be under the control of the service provider and transmitting only non-sensitive authentication information to the AC, for providing a secure technique for generating sensitive authentication information and for securely transmitting to and storing the information in the mobile system (MS) and a storage device controlled by the service provider, and for enabling a mobile station to utilize features supported by the visited system even if the MS home system does not support the feature. The present invention utilizes a secure authentication center (SAC) and a secure A-key management system (SAMS) to perform authentication. The SAC can be positioned locally in a home system, or it can be centrally located, for example, between systems. The SAC can be connected to many SAMS. Each SAMS stores sensitive authentication information for a group of MS's. During authentication, the SAC generates a request signal to the appropriate SAMS which generates a unique signal based upon the secret authentication data and other data stored therein. However, the sensitive authentication data is not sent to the SAC. The SAC performs authentication using the unique signal transmitted by the SAMS.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.