At present, the great progress made by the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to the emergence of the Internet of Drones (IoD). IoD is an extension of the IoT, which is used to control and manipulate drones entering the flight area. Now, the fifth-generation mobile communication technology (5G) has been introduced into the IoD; it can transmit ultra-high-definition data, make the drones respond to ground commands faster and provide more secure data transmission in the IoD. However, because the drones communicate on the public channel, they are vulnerable to security attacks; furthermore, drones can be easily captured by attackers. Therefore, to solve the security problem of the IoD, Hussain et al. recently proposed a three-party authentication protocol in an IoD environment. The protocol is applied to the supervision of smart cities and collects real-time data about the smart city through drones. However, we find that the protocol is vulnerable to drone capture attacks, privileged insider attacks and session key disclosure attacks. Based on the security of the above protocol, we designed an improved protocol. Through informal analysis, we proved that the protocol could resist known security attacks. In addition, we used the real-oracle random model and ProVerif tool to prove the security and effectiveness of the protocol. Finally, through comparison, we conclude that the protocol is secure compared with recent protocols.
At present, the great progress made by the Internet of Things (IoT) has led to the emergence of the Internet of Drones (IoD). IoD is an extension of the IoT, which is used to control and manipulate drones entering the flight area. Now, the fifth-generation mobile communication technology (5G) has been introduced into the IoD; it can transmit ultra-high-definition data, make the drones respond to ground commands faster and provide more secure data transmission in the IoD. However, because the drones communicate on the public channel, they are vulnerable to security attacks; furthermore, drones can be easily captured by attackers. Therefore, to solve the security problem of the IoD, Hussain et al. recently proposed a three-party authentication protocol in an IoD environment. The protocol is applied to the supervision of smart cities and collects real-time data about the smart city through drones. However, we find that the protocol is vulnerable to drone capture attacks, privileged insider attacks and session key disclosure attacks. Based on the security of the above protocol, we designed an improved protocol. Through informal analysis, we proved that the protocol could resist known security attacks. In addition, we used the real-oracle random model and ProVerif tool to prove the security and effectiveness of the protocol. Finally, through comparison, we conclude that the protocol is secure compared with recent protocols.
The tremendous growth in the realm of Internet of Things (IoT) has materialized the architecture of Internet of Drones (IoD). Being an extension of the IoT technology, the IoD may control and monitor the drones in a particular flight area. The emerging 5G mobile communication infrastructure can greatly help in transmitting the High-Definition (HD) data making the drones to communicate even faster. Nonetheless, these drones remain vulnerable to known security threats due to exchange of communication messages on public channel. In addition, the drones may also be exposed to physical capture and examination by the malicious adversaries. Thus, more concerted efforts are required to address the security challenges for drone communication in IoD-based ecosystem. We propose a novel PUF-based authentication protocol SPAKE-DC to protect not only the drone communication on public channel but also if the drone is physically intercepted with captured resources. The SPAKE-DC protocol supports anonymity, mutual authenticity, perfect forward secrecy, and is also immune from drone physical capture attack. The proposed scheme is duly evaluated and formally analyzed under Real-or-Random Oracle model. The performance results show that SPAKE-DC carry convincing findings in terms of security, computation and communication. Moreover, it supports 42% more number of security features as compared to previous techniques.
With the increasing demand for drones in diverse tasks, the Internet of Drones (IoD) has recently emerged as a significant technology in academia and industry. The IoD environment enables various services, such as traffic and environmental monitoring, disaster situation management, and military operations. However, IoD communication is vulnerable to security threats due to the exchange of sensitive information over insecure public channels. Moreover, public key-based cryptographic schemes are impractical for communication with resource-constrained drones due to their limited computational capability and resource capacity. Therefore, a secure and lightweight key agreement scheme must be developed while considering the characteristics of the IoD environment. In 2024, Alzahrani proposed a secure key agreement protocol for securing the IoD environment. However, Alzahrani’s protocol suffers from high computational overhead due to its reliance on elliptic curve cryptography and is vulnerable to drone and mobile user impersonation attacks and session key disclosure attacks by eavesdropping on public-channel messages. Therefore, this work proposes a lightweight and security-enhanced key agreement scheme for the IoD environment to address the limitations of Alzahrani’s protocol. The proposed protocol employs a physical unclonable function and simple cryptographic operations (XOR and hash functions) to achieve high security and efficiency. This work demonstrates the security of the proposed protocol using informal security analysis. This work also conducted formal security analysis using the Real-or-Random (RoR) model, Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation to verify the proposed protocol’s session key security, mutual authentication ability, and resistance to replay and MITM attacks, respectively. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that the proposed protocol offers better performance and security by comparing the computational and communication costs and security features with those of relevant protocols.
With the emergence of the concept of smart city and the increasing demands for a range of drones, Internet of Drones (IoD) has achieved a variety of attention by providing multiple benefits in academia and industry. IoD offers numerous services, such as traffic monitoring, environmental monitoring, and disaster management by combining infrastructure, Internet of Things (IoT), and Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANET) in smart city environments. However, communication among drones is vulnerable to potential security threats because the sensitive messages in various applications are exchanged via an insecure channel in IoD-based smart city environments. Since IoDs can be operated in unattended environment with minimum human interventions, smart devices (e.g., drones and sensors) deployed in IoD architectures are vulnerable to physical capture attacks. In addition, drones are resource-constrained in terms of computation and communication overheads, and it is not much viable to apply public key cryptography (PKC) that requires high computation and communication overheads. Thus, we design a secure and lightweight authentication protocol using a physical unclonable function (PUF) for IoD to guarantee reliable and useful services in smart city environments, called SLAP-IoD. We prove the security of the SLAP-IoD using informal and formal security analyses using the broadly recognized Real-Or-Random (ROR) random oracle model, and also through the formal security verification using the widely-accepted Automated Validation of Internet Security-sensitive Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) security verification. Furthermore, we compare the performance of the SLAP-IoD with related schemes. Consequently, we show that SLAP-IoD offers better security and efficiency than other related schemes and is suitable for IoD-based smart city environments.
Recently, drones have gained significant importance in various fields, such as military applications, healthcare, smart agriculture, and traffic monitoring. Equipped with embedded systems capable of sensing, collecting, and transmitting data in real time via public communication channels, drones enable the flow of confidential and sensitive information into cyberspace. However, this poses a risk of data being compromised during transmission over unsecured public channels. To mitigate such risks, many mutual authentication schemes have been proposed. Nevertheless, existing solutions still face security and performance limitations. In response, we propose the design of two lightweight and secure remote user authentication protocols and a key agreement for the Internet of Drones (IoD) environment. The first protocol, P-I, allows users and drones to mutually authenticate each other, establishing a secure and reliable connection. The second protocol, P-II, serves to re-authenticate authorized users, achieving a balance between security and performance. Both protocols utilize hash functions to enhance security and efficiency. We analyze the proposed protocols and conduct an informal security analysis and performance evaluation, focusing on security features, computational overhead, and communication efficiency. Our findings demonstrate that the proposed protocols outperform existing solutions by meeting all security requirements, achieving effective re-authentication, resisting both active and passive attacks, and providing suitable performance for IoD environments.
The Internet of Drones (IoD) is a network layer control system that manages the communication of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Drones have emerged as a novel approach to addressing everyday human challenges and are now used in a variety of domains, such as personal activities (e.g., photography and videography), urban applications (e.g., traffic monitoring and structural inspection), commercial operations (e.g., power line and tower inspection), agriculture, and military operations. Given the rapid growth of UAVs and their expanding applications, interconnecting drones to form an IoD is a desirable trend for enhancing flight safety and quality. However, challenges related to security, privacy, and inter-drone communication remain significant obstacles. Numerous authentication protocols have been developed to address these concerns. Recently, Zhang et al. proposed a PUF-based authentication scheme that uses unique identifiers and hash functions to secure authentication in the IoD environment. However, in this paper, we demonstrate that Zhang et al.'s scheme is vulnerable to several attacks, including secret value disclosure, integrity violation, key extraction, traceability, and anonymity violation. The presented attacks are shown to have a success probability of one. We also introduce two enhanced protocols that, through both informal and formal security proofs using the Scyther tool, demonstrate that they do not suffer from the vulnerabilities found in the earlier protocol. The communication costs of the proposed protocols (a) and (b) have increased by [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], respectively, compared to the previous protocol. The computational costs for the proposed protocols (a) and (b) have also increased by [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], respectively, while the storage costs in both proposed protocols remain unchanged compared to the previous protocol. It is true that the costs in the proposed protocols have risen; however, the previous design was vulnerable to various attacks, whereas the proposed protocols have demonstrated better security and have successfully achieved all their security objectives.
The rapid advance of manufacturing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, aka drones) has led to a rise in the use of their civilian and commercial applications. The access of these drones to controlled airspace can be efficiently coordinated through particular layered network architecture, often referred to as the Internet-of-Drones (IoD). The nature of IoD, which is deployed in an open-access environment, brings significant safety and security concerns. Classical cryptosystems such as elliptic curve cryptography, Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, and Diffie-Hellman are essential building blocks to secure communication in the IoD. However, with the rapid development of quantum computing, it will be easy to break public-key cryptosystems using efficient quantum algorithms like Shor’s algorithm. Thus, building quantum-safe solutions to enhance IoD security has become imperative. Fortunately, quantum technologies can provide unconditional security solutions to protect data and communications in the IoD environment. This paper proposes a quantum-based scheme to prevent unauthorized drones from accessing a specific flight zone and authenticates the identities and shared secret messages of involved entities. To do so, we used a quantum channel to encode the private information based on a pre-shared key and a random key generated in session. The involved entities also perform mutual authentication and share a secret key. We also provide the security proofs and analysis of the proposed scheme that indicates its resistance to well-known attacks.