A Secure D2D 5G-AKA Protocol with Anonymity Resistance and Perfect Forward Secrecy

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication operating in relay mode has become an essential strategy for extending network coverage and ensuring reliable connectivity, particularly in environments where direct links are unavailable in 5G network communications. However, securing D2D communication in 5G networks in resource-constrained Internet of Things (IoT) environments remains a significant challenge, especially authentication. The state-of-the-art for D2D communication in 5G reveals that existing authentication and key agreement protocols are often vulnerable to severe security threats, including denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, anonymity, ephemeral secret leakage and replay attacks, also do not offer perfect forward secrecy. Moreover, their computational complexity makes them unsuitable for deployment on constrained IoT devices. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a Secure and Efficient D2D authentication Protocol for 5G Communication based on Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) key exchange. The proposed protocol is rigorously evaluated through both informal and formal security methods (Real-Or-Random (ROR) logic and Scyther tool) to demonstrate its robustness against various known attacks. Additionally, a comprehensive performance comparison with existing schemes highlights the proposed protocol’s advantages in terms of security features, computational efficiency, communication overhead, and storage requirements.