Postquantum Cryptography for Internet of Things

Animesh Srivastava, Gulbir Singh, Anurag Shrivastava +2 more

Ian F. Blake

Dharminder Dharminder, Uddeshaya Kumar, Ashok Kumar Das +4 more

Abstract The primary objective of postquantum cryptography (also known as quantum‐resistant cryptography) is to develop the cryptographic systems that need to be robust against both quantum and classical computers, and can also interoperate with the existing communications protocols and networks. In an Internet of Things (IoT) environment, the communicated messages contain sensitive information that are transmitted over an open channel, where message integrity and data privacy become challenging tasks. Although several traditional cryptographic security protocols can be applied for IoT security and data privacy, such as authentication, access control, key agreement, and digital signature, but they are not resilient against quantum attacks. To overcome these issues, in this article, we first present an advanced and efficient construction of postquantum lattice‐based signcryption scheme, and then apply the constructed lattice‐based signcryption in IoT applications, where data sensed by the deployed IoT smart devices is securely stored at the cloud, via the gateway nodes (aggregators). The data stored at the cloud servers cannot be even modified by them due to the involved signatures generated by the aggregators. The formal security analysis shows the robustness of our designed lattice‐based signcryption scheme. Other detailed information security analysis and a performance analysis with the traditional number‐theoretical based public key cryptosystems show the efficacy, and significantly better security and functionality features of the proposed scheme under the lattice‐based postquantum context.

Juliet Samandari, Clémentine Gritti

Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is a common communication protocol used in the Internet of Things (IoT). MQTT is a simple, lightweight messaging protocol used to establish communication between multiple devices relying on the publish–subscribe model. However, the protocol does not provide authentication, and most proposals to incorporate it lose their lightweight feature and do not consider the future risk of quantum attacks. IoT devices are generally resource-constrained, and postquantum cryptography is often more computationally resource-intensive compared to current cryptographic standards, adding to the complexity of the transition. In this paper, we use the postquantum digital signature scheme CRYSTALS-Dilithium to provide authentication for MQTT and determine what the CPU, memory and disk usage are when doing so. We further investigate another possibility to provide authentication when using MQTT, namely a key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) trick proposed in 2020 for transport level security (TLS). Such a trick is claimed to save up to 90% in CPU cycles. We use the postquantum KEM scheme CRYSTALS-KYBER and compare the resulting CPU, memory and disk usages with traditional authentication. We found that the use of KEM for authentication resulted in a speed increase of 25 ms, a saving of 71%. There were some extra costs for memory but this is minimal enough to be acceptable for most IoT devices.

Bikramjit Choudhury, Ashlesha Hota, Mithun Karmakar +3 more

The proliferation of 5th generation (5G) technology has catalyzed significant advancements in various application of Internet of Things(IoT) such as Intelligent Transportation Systems, Smart Energy, Industrial IoT (IIoT), Digital Twins, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Smart Health. However, with the upcoming advent of quantum computing, conventional security methods are encountering new and significant challenges, requiring the revaluation of pre and post-quantum security measures. This study provides an in-depth analysis of security measures before and after the advent of quantum computing for intelligent IoT applications enabled by 5G-connected network. The survey thoroughly analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of conventional public key cryptography methods such as RSA, Diffie-Hellman, Secret Sharing, and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), which are susceptible to quantum risks, and postquantum cryptographic methods such as lattice-based cryptography, code-based cryptography, and multivariate based techniques, which may provide protection against quantum attacks. Furthermore, we evaluate the suitability of these strategies in the context of 5G-enabled IoT deployments, taking into account the distinct requirements and obstacles presented by interconnected IoT devices. Although pre quantum public key cryptographic algorithms are still in use, but active research is going on to design and implement PQC algorithms to secure 5G IoT, while hybrid schemes have shown great promise being backward compatible with traditional cryptographic approaches at the same time bring quantum resistance. The survey offers significant insights into the latest pre and post-quantum security solutions for 5G-enabled IoT Applications. It helps in making educated decisions and implementing strong security measures in preparation for the quantum computing age.

Juliane Krämer