The proliferation of Internet of Drones (IoDs)-based use cases has greatly transformed the cyberspace into pervasive and ubiquitous world. The IoD applications could range beyond military, civilian and industrial domains. However, these drones work in hostile environment, and face many challenges related to communication security. Owing to energy, storage and computational resource-constraints, the complex and heavy cryptographic solutions could not be directly deployed in IoD environment. Several authentication protocols for IoD system can be witnessed however with limitations. In this work, we have demonstrated a two-stage PUF-enabled lightweight authentication protocol (TS-PAID) for IoD setting. In comparison with related protocols, the TS-PAID bring more computational and communicational efficiencies along with resilience against known security threats including physical capture of drone. The security properties of TS-PAID are proven under formal analysis based on Real-or-Random (RoR) random oracle model. The performance findings exhibit practicality and effectiveness for the proposed scheme against the comparative studies.
The proliferation of Internet of Drones (IoDs)-based use cases has greatly transformed the cyberspace into pervasive and ubiquitous world. The IoD applications could range beyond military, civilian and industrial domains. However, these drones work in hostile environment, and face many challenges related to communication security. Owing to energy, storage and computational resource-constraints, the complex and heavy cryptographic solutions could not be directly deployed in IoD environment. Several authentication protocols for IoD system can be witnessed however with limitations. In this work, we have demonstrated a two-stage PUF-enabled lightweight authentication protocol (TS-PAID) for IoD setting. In comparison with related protocols, the TS-PAID bring more computational and communicational efficiencies along with resilience against known security threats including physical capture of drone. The security properties of TS-PAID are proven under formal analysis based on Real-or-Random (RoR) random oracle model. The performance findings exhibit practicality and effectiveness for the proposed scheme against the comparative studies.
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.
The existing authentication and key agreement (AKA) schemes for the internet of drones (IoD) still suffer from various security attacks and fail to ensure required security properties. Moreover, drones generally have limited memory and computation capability. Motivated by these issues, a secure and lightweight AKA protocol for IoD (SLAKA-IoD) is proposed based on physical unclonable function (PUF), “exclusive or” (XOR) operation and hash function, which are simple cryptographic operations and functions that can provide better performance. In the SLAKA-IoD protocol, a drone and the ground station (GS) perform mutual authentication and establish a secure session key between them, and any two drones can also perform mutual authentication and establish a secure session key between them. Via informal security analysis, formal security analysis using the strand space model, and security verification based on the Scyther tool, the SLAKA-IoD protocol is proven to resist various security attacks and ensure required security properties. Further comparative analysis shows that the SLAKA-IoD protocol can provide more security features, and is generally lightweight as compared with these related AKA protocols for IoD, so it is suitable for IoD.
The use of Internet of Drones (IoD) technology has surged across various domains such as logistics, surveying, industrial inspections, emergency response, security, infrastructure monitoring, crop management, and more. However, real-time communication with drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the IoD environment occurs over an insecure open channel, making it susceptible to various security and privacy vulnerabilities, including unauthorized access, data interception, denial of service attacks, and privacy concerns. Due to their unique characteristics, including long transmission distances, unstable communication environments, resource limitations, and the highly dynamic nature of UAVs, ensuring the security and privacy of IoD systems is of paramount importance for the success of IoD-based applications. Furthermore, drones are resource-constrained devices, and employing expensive security solutions is impractical, as it would significantly reduce the operational capacity of drones. In this paper, we present the design of an ultralightweight, secure, and robust user-authenticated key agreement framework for the IoD environment, named USAF-IoD. The proposed USAF-IoD is developed by incorporating authenticated encryption (ASCON), cryptographic hashing, XOR operations, and the use of physical unclonable functions (PUFs). PUFs are employed to enhance resistance against physical tampering attacks. The security analysis reveals that the proposed USAF-IoD meets the essential security requirements of the IoD environment. The comparative analysis further highlights the effectiveness of the proposed USAF-IoD, notably excelling in terms of security and functionality characteristics when compared to existing benchmark schemes, and showcasing competitive performance in computation, communication, and energy overheads.
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.
Internet of drones (IoD) environments can provide convenient services such as safety monitoring, map exploration, and military applications using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). However, UAVs can be vulnerable to security attacks because they provide services to users through aerial networks. Moreover, the limited computational power of UAVs, due to their restricted resources, must be considered. Therefore, lightweight and secure authentication protocol is necessary for IoD environments. In 2024, Zhang et al. propose a “PUF-based robust and lightweight authentication protocol for IoD (PRLAP-IoD)” environments. In this paper, we conduct a cryptanalysis of PRLAP-IoD and prove that their protocol can encounter “ephemeral secret leakage (ESL)” and “stolen verifier attacks”. Moreover, PRLAP-IoD does not ensure “perfect forward secrecy (PFS)” and “untraceability”. After that, we present mitigation strategies to reinforce security and privacy of PRLAP-IoD.