Subject: [Cfrg] Curve25519 chosen for identity encryption in 3GPP 5G

From: John Mattsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2018 16:47:09 +0000

I am happy to announce that Curve25519 [RFC 7748] will be mandatory to support [S3-180964] for ECIES encryption of subscriber’s long-term identifiers (formerly known as IMSIs) in 3GPP 5G. This significantly improve subscribers’ privacy by protecting against so called IMSI catchers. Curve448 will likely be added in a later release as 3GPP is looking at introducing a higher security level requested by governments and financial institutions.

Cheers,
John

http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/tsg_sa/WG3_Security/TSGS3_90Bis_SanDiego/docs/S3-180964.zip
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7748
https://www.ericsson.com/research-blog/protecting-5g-imsi-catchers/