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An efficient mutual authentication scheme for IoT systems

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Abstract

The resource-constrained nature of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and their diversity and abundancy represent a major challenge for the development of efficient security solutions that fit IoT systems and ensure end-to-end security. This paper presents an efficient IoT authentication scheme that provides mutual authentication between three different entities making up the IoT system under study; IoT devices, an IoT manufacturer server, and an authentication server. The authentication process is accomplished by the exchange of only six small messages in three successive stages: the IoT device association stage, the IoT device–AS server communication initialization stage, and the exchanged data encryption stage. The scheme employs the HMAC keyed hash function to provide mutual authentication and the AES-GCM lightweight symmetric cryptographic function to provide integrity and confidentiality for the exchanged data. The proposed scheme was simulated using the Network Simulator NS3 with C++ crypto++ library, using the various IoT enabling technology models. The obtained simulation results verified the proper functioning of the designed scheme and demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed scheme in terms of the low computational and communication overheads. The scheme needed 13.04 ms and 470 bytes to complete the mutual authentication process, including session key exchange. The low computational and communicational overhead of the proposed scheme are due to the scheme’s small-sized messages, lightweight cryptographic functions, and passive discovery of IoT device. Security analysis of the scheme shows that the essential security requirements, which includes mutual authentication, confidentiality, and integrity, have been met by the proposed authentication scheme. Moreover, the scheme is inherently robust against common cyber-attacks such as the DoS, impersonation, spoofing, sniffing, and man-in-the-middle attacks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, The King Abdullah II School of Engineering, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Al-Jubeiha, P.O. BOX 1438, Amman, 11941, Jordan

    Islam Alshawish & Ali Al-Haj

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Correspondence to Ali Al-Haj.

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Alshawish, I., Al-Haj, A. An efficient mutual authentication scheme for IoT systems. J Supercomput 78, 16056–16087 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-022-04520-5

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