Control signaling messages in Mobile IPv6 are mainly used to inform the home agent (HA) and the correspondent node (CN) about the mobile node's (MN's) new address when its network attachment point is changed. In order to prevent various security attacks, these messages must be protected. In the current standard, the control signaling messages between a HA and a MN are authenticated using IPSec, often with IKEv2 and X.509 certificates. Control signaling messages between a MN and a CN are currently protected by an effective but insecure protocol, known as Return Routability. Using IBE (Identity-Based Encryption) for authenticating control signaling messages requires more processing power but significant security enhancements are achieved. The current protocols for protecting control signaling messages are outlined in this paper. Proposed approaches for implementing IBE-authentication between a MN and a HA as well as between a MN and a CN are presented. Environments where the MN and the CN use the same Public Key Generator (PKG) as well as environments where they use different PKGs are taken into account. Finally, the performance of some proposed signaling protocols is estimated. An overview of IBE is given and the elements and operations needed to set up an IBE infrastructure are described in an appendix.

Control signaling messages in Mobile IPv6 are mainly used to inform the home agent (HA) and the correspondent node (CN) about the mobile node's (MN's) new address when its network attachment point is changed. In order to prevent various security attacks, these messages must be protected. In the current standard, the control signaling messages between a HA and a MN are authenticated using IPSec, often with IKEv2 and X.509 certificates. Control signaling messages between a MN and a CN are currently protected by an effective but insecure protocol, known as Return Routability. Using IBE (Identity-Based Encryption) for authenticating control signaling messages requires more processing power but significant security enhancements are achieved. The current protocols for protecting control signaling messages are outlined in this paper. Proposed approaches for implementing IBE-authentication between a MN and a HA as well as between a MN and a CN are presented. Environments where the MN and the CN use the same Public Key Generator (PKG) as well as environments where they use different PKGs are taken into account. Finally, the performance of some proposed signaling protocols is estimated. An overview of IBE is given and the elements and operations needed to set up an IBE infrastructure are described in an appendix.