Paper 2022/1081

Pairing-free secure-channel establishment in mobile networks with fine-grained lawful interception

Abstract

Modern-day mobile communications allow users to connect from any place, at any time. However, this ubiquitous access comes at the expense of their privacy. Currently, the operators providing mobile service to users learn call-and SMS-metadata, and even the contents of those exchanges. A main reason behind this is the Lawful-Interception (LI) requirement, by which serving networks must provide this (meta-)data to authorities, given a warrant. At ESORICS 2021, Arfaoui et al. pioneered a primitive called Lawful-Interception Key-Exchange, which achieves the best of both worlds: (provably) privacy-enhanced communications, and finegrained fine-grained, limited access to user data. Their work had two important shortcomings. First, their protocol required pairings which, while sufficiently efficient, might not always be available in the mobile setting. More importantly, that scheme was only applicable in a domestic setting, where the concerned users (Alice and Bob) were subject to the same LI authorities. The case of roaming was left as an open question. In this paper we answer that open question. We extend the framework of Arfaoui et al. to allow Alice and Bob (now subject to potentially two sets of authorities) to establish a secure channel that guarantees the strong properties afforded by the LIKE schemes of ESORICS 2021. Our construction is pairing-free, faster than that of Arfaoui et al., and its security relies on standard assumptions.