When Kevin Ashton proposed the catchword 'Internet of Things' in 1999, little did he know that technology will become an indispensable part of human lives in just two decades. In short, the Internet of Things (IoT), is a catch-all terminology used to describe devices connected to the internet. These devices can share and receive data as well as provide instructions over a network. By design itself, the IoT system requires multicasting data and information to a set of designated devices, securely. Taking everything into account, Broadcast Encryption (BE) seems to be the natural choice to address the problem. BE allows an originator to broadcast ciphertexts to a big group of receivers in a well-organized and competent way, while ensuring that only designated people can decrypt the data. In this work, we put forward the first Identity-Based Broadcast Encryption scheme based on multivariate polynomials that achieves post-quantum security. Multivariate public key cryptosystems (MPKC), touted as one of the most promising post-quantum cryptography candidates, forms the foundation on which our scheme relies upon, which allows it to be very cost-effective and faster when implemented. In addition, it also provides resistance to collusion attack, and as a consequence our scheme can be utilized to form an efficient and robust IoT system.
When Kevin Ashton proposed the catchword 'Internet of Things' in 1999, little did he know that technology will become an indispensable part of human lives in just two decades. In short, the Internet of Things (IoT), is a catch-all terminology used to describe devices connected to the internet. These devices can share and receive data as well as provide instructions over a network. By design itself, the IoT system requires multicasting data and information to a set of designated devices, securely. Taking everything into account, Broadcast Encryption (BE) seems to be the natural choice to address the problem. BE allows an originator to broadcast ciphertexts to a big group of receivers in a well-organized and competent way, while ensuring that only designated people can decrypt the data. In this work, we put forward the first Identity-Based Broadcast Encryption scheme based on multivariate polynomials that achieves post-quantum security. Multivariate public key cryptosystems (MPKC), touted as one of the most promising post-quantum cryptography candidates, forms the foundation on which our scheme relies upon, which allows it to be very cost-effective and faster when implemented. In addition, it also provides resistance to collusion attack, and as a consequence our scheme can be utilized to form an efficient and robust IoT system.
Identity-Based Broadcast Encryption (IBBE) is a novel concept that can efficiently and securely transmit confidential content to a group of authorized users without the traditional Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI). After carefully exploring these areas, we have observed that none of the existing works have adopted the quantum-attack resistant cryptographic machinery Multivariate Public-Key Cryptography (MPKC) with provable security. We are the first to design a quantum-safe IBBE that solely relies on the MPKC framework. Our proposed protocol has achieved $ \mathcal{O}(n) $-size communication bandwidth and $ {n^3}\cdot\mathcal{O}\big(\max\big\{N, {\delta}^4\big\}\big) $-size overhead storage without any security breach. Here, $ n $ is the number of variables for each multivariate polynomial, $ N $ represents the total number of system users, and $ \delta $ denotes a positive fixed-length. More positively, our design has achieved the adaptive INDistinguishable Chosen-Ciphertext Attack (IND-CCA) security in the Random Oracle Model (ROM) under the hardness of standard Multivariate Quadratic (MQ) problem. We emphasize that our system can also be immune against collusion attacks where several users come together to create an illicit decryption box.
The rapid proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has heightened concerns regarding their security and privacy. Conventional cryptographic methods underpinning IoT security are increasingly threatened by the emergence of quantum computing, which promises to break widely used encryption algorithms such as RSA and ECC. This paper explores post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) algorithms tailored to the resource-constrained nature of IoT environments. It analyzes lattice-based, hash-based, code-based, and multivariate polynomial cryptographic schemes as promising candidates for securing IoT communications against quantum attacks. The paper further discusses implementation challenges, performance considerations, and potential pathways for integrating PQC within existing IoT architectures. Empirical data on computational efficiency and security strength are also presented to guide future deployment.
The rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to an unprecedented scale of data exchange across heterogeneous and resource-constrained devices. Ensuring confidentiality and secure key management in such environments is challenging. Traditional public-key infrastructures require heavy certificate-handling overhead. Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) offers a lightweight alternative by deriving public keys directly from device identities, making it attractive for IoT deployments. However, IoT devices are highly vulnerable to side-channel and key-extraction attacks, motivating the need for Forward-Secure IBE(FS-IBE), where the compromise of a current secret key does not threaten past communications. Existing FS-IBE constructions based on classical hardness assumptions are not secure in the era of post-quantum, while the lattice-based (LWE-based) forward-secure scheme suffer from large key and ciphertext sizes, limiting their suitability for constrained IoT systems. Here, we propose a new lattice-based fs-IBE scheme in the ring setting, relying on the RLWE assumption to achieve post-quantum security and significant efficiency gains. Our design uses trapdoor delegation with a minimal-cover mechanism over a binary tree. It results in compact public parameters and efficient per-epoch key updates. Compared to prior LWE-based constructions, our scheme reduces public key, secret key, and ciphertext sizes, and thus, making it better suited for practical IoT environments.
Identity-based encryption is an important cryptographic system that is employed to ensure confidentiality of a message in communication. This article presents a provably secure identity based encryption based on post quantum security assumption. The security of the proposed encryption is based on the hard problem, namely Learning with Errors on integer lattices. This construction is anonymous and produces pseudo random ciphers. Both public-key size and ciphertext-size have been reduced in the proposed encryption as compared to those for other relevant schemes without compromising the security. Next, we incorporate the constructed identity based encryption (IBE) for Internet of Things (IoT) applications, where the IoT smart devices send securely the sensing data to their nearby gateway nodes(s) with the help of IBE and the gateway node(s) secure aggregate the data from the smart devices by decrypting the messages using the proposed IBE decryption. Later, the gateway nodes will securely send the aggregated data to the cloud server(s) and the Big data analytics is performed on the authenticated data using the Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) algorithms for accurate and better predictions.
Abstract Over the last few years, Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) has completely transformed the healthcare industry. It is bringing out the most notable, and unprecedented impacts on human health, and has totally changed the way we look at the healthcare industry. The healthcare sector all around the globe are leapfrogging, and adopting the technology, helping in transforming drastically in a very short span of time. However, as more and more number of medical devices are being connected to IoMT, security issues like ensuring authenticity and integrity of the transmitted data are also on the rise. In view of the context, there is a need of an efficient cryptographic primitive that can address these issues in a viable manner. A signature scheme seems to be the natural choice to mitigate the security concerns. But, traditional signature schemes, both public-key-infrastructure-based and Identity-based, have their own disadvantages, which makes them unsuitable for IoMT networks. Thus, to address the security issues and problems like certificate management and key escrow, herein, we put forward the first multivariate-based certificateless signature scheme, namely, Multivariate Certificateless Signature (Mul-CLS), which is built on top of the intractability of multivariate-quadratic (MQ) problem. The fact that multivariate public key cryptosystem provides fast, post-quantum safe and efficient primitives makes it a front-runner candidate among the other post-quantum cryptography candidates. Our scheme Mul-CLS provides existential unforgeability against chosen message and chosen identity Super Type I and Super Type II adversary if solving the MQ problem is NP-hard. In addition to that, our proposed Mul-CLS presents itself as a robust and cost-friendly cryptographic building block for building IoMT networks.
The rapid proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has revolutionized digital communication, yet it simultaneously poses unprecedented security challenges due to constrained device capabilities and increasing cyber threats. Conventional cryptographic techniques, while currently effective, are vulnerable to emerging quantum computing technologies that threaten to render classical encryption obsolete. This paper explores the integration of quantum-safe cryptographic techniques within IoT networks to ensure long-term confidentiality, integrity, and authentication. It examines post-quantum cryptographic primitives, including lattice-based, hash-based, multivariate, and code-based schemes, and evaluates their suitability for resource-constrained IoT environments. The study focuses on lightweight implementation strategies, balancing computational efficiency with robust security requirements. Simulation analyses demonstrate that properly optimized quantum safe protocols can provide resilient encryption, key exchange, and digital signature functionalities without overwhelming device resources. Furthermore, the integration of these techniques with IoT communication standards and secure network protocols ensures end-to-end protection across heterogeneous networks. Challenges such as latency, energy consumption, and scalability are addressed, highlighting the necessity of tailored cryptographic solutions for diverse IoT applications. The findings confirm that quantum safe cryptography is essential for future-proofing IoT networks, offering sustainable security measures that remain resilient against both classical and quantum adversaries, thereby supporting the continued expansion of secure and intelligent interconnected systems.