The Internet of Things (IoT) is being applied to various environments such as telecare systems, smart homes, and intelligent transportation systems. The information generated from IoT devices is stored at remote servers, and external users authenticate to the server for requesting access to the stored data. In IoT environments, the authentication process is required to be conducted efficiently, and should be secure against various attacks and ensure user anonymity and untraceability to ensure sustainability of the network. However, many existing protocols proposed in IoT environments do not meet these requirements. Recently, Rajaram et al. proposed a paring-based user authentication scheme. We found that the Rajaram et al. scheme is vulnerable to various attacks such as offline password guessing, impersonation, privileged insider, and known session-specific temporary information attacks. Additionally, as their scheme uses bilinear pairing, it requires high computation and communication costs. In this study, we propose a novel authentication scheme that resolves these security problems. The proposed scheme uses only hash and exclusive-or operations to be applicable in IoT environments. We analyze the proposed protocol using informal analysis and formal analysis methods such as the BAN logic, real-or-random (ROR) model, and the AVISPA simulation, and we show that the proposed protocol has better security and performance compared with existing authentication protocols. Consequently, the proposed protocol is sustainable and suitable for real IoT environments.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is being applied to various environments such as telecare systems, smart homes, and intelligent transportation systems. The information generated from IoT devices is stored at remote servers, and external users authenticate to the server for requesting access to the stored data. In IoT environments, the authentication process is required to be conducted efficiently, and should be secure against various attacks and ensure user anonymity and untraceability to ensure sustainability of the network. However, many existing protocols proposed in IoT environments do not meet these requirements. Recently, Rajaram et al. proposed a paring-based user authentication scheme. We found that the Rajaram et al. scheme is vulnerable to various attacks such as offline password guessing, impersonation, privileged insider, and known session-specific temporary information attacks. Additionally, as their scheme uses bilinear pairing, it requires high computation and communication costs. In this study, we propose a novel authentication scheme that resolves these security problems. The proposed scheme uses only hash and exclusive-or operations to be applicable in IoT environments. We analyze the proposed protocol using informal analysis and formal analysis methods such as the BAN logic, real-or-random (ROR) model, and the AVISPA simulation, and we show that the proposed protocol has better security and performance compared with existing authentication protocols. Consequently, the proposed protocol is sustainable and suitable for real IoT environments.
In recent years, the Internet of things (IoT) has become an encouraging communication paradigm that has numerous applications including smart city, smart home and intelligent transportation system. The information sensed by several IoT smart devices can be security stored at the (cloud) servers. An external user, being a client, can access the services from a server for the sensing information, provided that a mutual authentication happens among them. Using the established session key among the user and the server, encrypted information with the help of session key can be delivered to the user by the server securely. Recently, Rana et al. proposed a smart-card based remote user authentication scheme using user password. In this comment paper, we carefully analyzed the scheme of Rana et al. and tracked down that their scheme is insecure against serious attacks, including stolen smart card attack, privileged-insider attack, user impersonation attack, password change attack and Ephemeral Secret Leakage (ESL) attack. Furthermore, their scheme does not preserve untraceability feature. To remedy these security pitfalls, we also provide some remedies that can help in building more secure and effective user authentication scheme to apply in securing next generation IoT infrastructure.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is among the most promising technologies of the future, and its development has garnered attention worldwide. However, the rise of the IoT has been accompanied by a proportionate increase in security concerns regarding communication between IoT entities. Recently, Alzahrani et al. proposed an identity-based authentication and key agreement protocol for an IoT environment, wherein a physically unclonable function was employed. They claimed that their protocol can resist various types of attacks; however, after thorough analysis, we determined it to be ineffective against privileged internal attacks, physical IoT device capture attacks, stolen-verifier attacks, and known temporary information exposure attacks. To resolve these security weaknesses, we propose a new authentication and key agreement protocol. In addition, we demonstrate that the proposed protocol is provably secure in real-or-random (ROR) model and Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, resisting known attacks while incurring low communication and computation costs.
Summary Because of the exponential growth of Internet of Things (IoT), several services are being developed. These services can be accessed through smart gadgets by the user at any place, every time and anywhere. This makes security and privacy central to IoT environments. In this paper, we propose a lightweight, robust, and multi‐factor remote user authentication and key agreement scheme for IoT environments. Using this protocol, any authorized user can access and gather real‐time sensor data from the IoT nodes. Before gaining access to any IoT node, the user must first get authenticated by the gateway node as well as the IoT node. The proposed protocol is based on XOR and hash operations, and includes: (i) a3‐factorauthentication (ie, password, biometrics, and smart device); (ii)mutual authentication; (iii)shared session key; and (iv)key freshness. It satisfies desirable security attributes and maintains acceptable efficiency in terms of the computational overheads for resource constrained IoT environment. Further, the informal and formal security analysis using AVISPA proves security strength of the protocol and its robustness against all possible security threats. Simulation results also prove that the scheme is secure against attacks.
The term IoT refers to the interconnection and exchange of data among devices/sensors. IoT devices are often small, low cost, and have limited resources. The IoT issues and challenges are growing increasingly. Security and privacy issues are among the most important concerns in IoT applications, such as smart buildings. Remote cybersecurity attacks are the attacks which do not require physical access to the IoT networks, where the attacker can remotely access and communicate with the IoT devices through a wireless communication channel. Thus, remote cybersecurity attacks are a significant threat. Emerging applications in smart environments such as smart buildings require remote access for both users and resources. Since the user/building communication channel is insecure, a lightweight and secure authentication protocol is required. In this paper, we propose a new secure remote user mutual authentication protocol based on transitory identities and multi-factor authentication for IoT smart building environment. The protocol ensures that only legitimate users can authenticate with smart building controllers in an anonymous, unlinkable, and untraceable manner. The protocol also avoids clock synchronization problem and can resist quantum computing attacks. The security of the protocol is evaluated using two different methods: (1) informal analysis; (2) model check using the automated validation of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) toolkit. The communication overhead and computational cost of the proposed are analyzed. The security and performance analysis show that our protocol is secure and efficient.
Abstract Internet of Things (IoT) is a developing technology in our time that is prone to security problems as it uses wireless and shared networks. A challenging scenario in IoT environments is Device-to-Device (D2D) communication that an authentication server as a trusted third-party, does not involve in the authentication and key agreement process. It is only involved in the process of allocating long-term secret keys and their update. A lot of authentication protocols have been suggested for such situations. This article demonstrated that three state-of-the-art related protocols failed to remain anonymous, insecure against key compromise impersonation (KCI) attack, and clogging attack. To counter the pitfalls of them, a new D2D mutual authentication and key agreement protocol is designed here. The proposed protocol is anonymous, untraceable, and highly secure. Moreover, there is no need for a secure channel to generate a pair of private and public keys in the registration phase.) Formal security proof and security analysis using BAN logic, Real-Or-Random (ROR) model, and Scyther tool showed that our proposed protocol satisfied security requirements. Furthermore, communication cost, computation cost, and energy consumption comparisons denoted our schema has better performance, compared to other protocols.
To improve the quality of service and reduce the possibility of security attacks, a secure and efficient user authentication mechanism is required for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and the Internet of Things (IoT). Session key establishment between the sensor node and the user is also required for secure communication. In this paper, we perform the security analysis of A.K.Das’s user authentication scheme (given in 2015), Choi et al.’s scheme (given in 2016), and Park et al.’s scheme (given in 2016). The security analysis shows that their schemes are vulnerable to various attacks like user impersonation attack, sensor node impersonation attack and attacks based on legitimate users. Based on the cryptanalysis of these existing protocols, we propose a secure and efficient authenticated session key establishment protocol which ensures various security features and overcomes the drawbacks of existing protocols. The formal and informal security analysis indicates that the proposed protocol withstands the various security vulnerabilities involved in WSNs. The automated validation using AVISPA and Scyther tool ensures the absence of security attacks in our scheme. The logical verification using the Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic confirms the correctness of the proposed protocol. Finally, the comparative analysis based on computational overhead and security features of other existing protocol indicate that the proposed user authentication system is secure and efficient. In future, we intend to implement the proposed protocol in real-world applications of WSNs and IoT.