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MEC technology provides a distributed computing environment in 5G mobile networks for application and service hosting. It allows customers with different requirements and professional competencies to use the services offered by external suppliers. We consider a service access control framework on 5G MEC networks that is efficient, flexible, and user-friendly. Its central element is the MEC Enabler, which handles AAA requests for stakeholders accessing services hosted on the edge servers. The JSON Web Token (JWT) open standard is a suitable tool for the MEC Enabler to manage access control credentials and transfer them securely between parties. In this paper, in the context of access control, we propose the token reference pattern called JSON MEC Access Token (JMAT) and analyze the effectiveness of its available protection methods in compliance with the standard requirements of MEC-hosted services in 5G networks.

In Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3), a secure connection is established in two sequential stages. Firstly, in the authentication and association stage, a pairwise master key (PMK) is generated. Secondly, in the post-association stage, a pairwise transient key (PTK) is generated from PMK using the traditional 4-way handshake protocol. To reduce the heavy load of the first stage, PMK caching can be used. If the client and AP are previously authenticated and have a PMK cache, the first heavy stage can be skipped and the cached PMK can be used to directly execute the 4-way handshake. However, PMK caching is a very primitive technology to manage shared key between a client and AP and there are many limitations, AP has to manage a stateful cache for a large number of clients, cache lifetime is limited, etc. Paired token (PT)is a new secondary credential scheme that provides stateless pre-shared key (PSK) in a client-server environment. The server issues a paired token (public token and secret token) to an authenticated client where the public token has the role of signed identity and the secret token is a kind of shared secret. Once a client is equipped with PT, it can be used for many symmetric key-based cryptographic applications such as authentication, authorization, key establishment, etc. In this paper, we apply the PT approach to WPA3 and try to replace the PMK caching with the one-time authenticated key establishment using PT. At the end of a successful full handshake, AP securely issues PT to the client. Then, in subsequent re-association requests, the client and AP can compute the same one-time authenticated PMK using PT in a stateless way. Using this kind of stateless re-association technology, AP can provide a high performance Wi-Fi service to a larger number of clients.

In WPA3 secure connection is executed in two sequential stages. Firstly, in authentication and association stage a pairwise master key (PMK) is generated. Secondly, in post-association stage a pairwise transient key (PTK) is generated from PMK using the traditional 4-way handshake protocol. To reduce the heavy computation of the first stage PMK caching can be used. If client and AP are previously authenticated and has PMK cache, client can skip the first heavy stage and reuse the cached PMK to directly execute the 4-way handshake. But PMK caching is a very primitive technology to manage shared key between client and AP and there are many limitations; AP has to manage stateful cache for multiple clients, cache lifetime is limited, etc. Paired token (PT) \cite{LZ} is a new secondary credential scheme that provides stateless pre-shared key (PSK) in client-server environment. Server issues paired token (public token and secret token) to authenticated client where public token has the role of signed identity and secret token is a kind of shared secret. Once client is equipped with PT, it can be used for many symmetric key based cryptographic applications such as authentication, authorization, key establishment, etc. In this paper we apply the PT approach to WPA3 and try to replace the PMK caching with the one-time authenticated key establishment using PT. At the end of the authentication and association stage AP securely issues PT to client. Then in reassociation stage client and AP can compute the same one-time authenticated PMK from PT in stateless way and compute PTK using the traditional 4-way handshake protocol. Using this kind of stateless reassociation technology AP can provide high performance service to huge number of clients.

The development of information and communication technology (ICT) has opened the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which many devices can connect to the Internet to communicate. Recently, various technologies, such as smart grids, connected cars, and smart farms, have emerged based on IoT, and there is also the smart home, which is the fastest growing market. The smart home is where devices installed for various purposes connect to each other through the Internet so that users can use the service anytime and anywhere. However, while the smart home provides convenience to users, recently the smart home has been exposed to various security threats, such as vulnerability of session/cookies and the use of vulnerable OAuth. In addition, attacks on smart homes by hackers using these vulnerabilities are also increasing. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a user authentication method using the JSON Web Token (JWT) and International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) in the smart home, and solved the problem of unauthorized smart home device registration of hackers by the application of IMEI and JWT technology.