BOOTSTRAPPING AUTHENTICATION USING DISTINGUISHED RANDOM CHALLENGES

摘要

A communications system and method of bootstrapping mobile station authentication and establishing a secure encryption key are disclosed. In one embodiment of the communications network, a distinguished random challenge is reserved for generation of a secure encryption key, wherein the distinguished random challenge is not used for authentication of a mobile station. The distinguished random challenge is stored at a mobile station's mobile equipment and used to generate a secure encryption key, and a bootstrapping function in the network uses a normal random challenge to authenticate the mobile station and the distinguished random challenge to generate the secure encryption key.