ABSTRACT The Internet of Things (IoT) has significantly transformed industries, including agriculture, by optimizing resources and enhancing monitoring. Smart agriculture IoT protocols utilize sensors for data transmission over the IoT network. Due to its open communication medium, it faces significant security challenges, including data authentication, etc. Current literature has various security methods to safeguard IoT‐enabled smart agriculture. However, it has been seen that such traditional systems are weak against the futuristic quantum computers. To safeguard smart agriculture IoT, we propose a quantum‐resistance identity‐based data authentication protocol and call it as SmartAgri‐IDQ. The security of the proposed authentication mechanism is based on the lattice hard assumptions such as small integer solution (SIS) or inhomogeneous SIS (ISIS) problems. The identity‐based cryptography (IBC) is used to avoid the overhead of certificate management and public‐key infrastructure (PKI). To validate the security of the proposed scheme, formal analysis has been done using the Random Oracle Model (ROM) and the Scyther tool, along with informal security analysis. To evaluate the efficiency, a performance and comparative analysis has been estimated based on storage, computation, and communication costs, which affirms the protocol's suitability in resource constraints smart agriculture IoT.
ABSTRACT The Internet of Things (IoT) has significantly transformed industries, including agriculture, by optimizing resources and enhancing monitoring. Smart agriculture IoT protocols utilize sensors for data transmission over the IoT network. Due to its open communication medium, it faces significant security challenges, including data authentication, etc. Current literature has various security methods to safeguard IoT‐enabled smart agriculture. However, it has been seen that such traditional systems are weak against the futuristic quantum computers. To safeguard smart agriculture IoT, we propose a quantum‐resistance identity‐based data authentication protocol and call it as SmartAgri‐IDQ. The security of the proposed authentication mechanism is based on the lattice hard assumptions such as small integer solution (SIS) or inhomogeneous SIS (ISIS) problems. The identity‐based cryptography (IBC) is used to avoid the overhead of certificate management and public‐key infrastructure (PKI). To validate the security of the proposed scheme, formal analysis has been done using the Random Oracle Model (ROM) and the Scyther tool, along with informal security analysis. To evaluate the efficiency, a performance and comparative analysis has been estimated based on storage, computation, and communication costs, which affirms the protocol's suitability in resource constraints smart agriculture IoT.
The rapid expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems has introduced significant security challenges due to resource-constrained devices, heterogeneous network architectures, and largescale connectivity. Traditional authentication and key exchange mechanisms, primarily based on classical cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and ECC, are vulnerable to future quantum computing attacks. The emergence of quantum algorithms, particularly Shor’s algorithm, threatens the long-term confidentiality and integrity of IoT communications. This paper proposes a Quantum-Resistant Authentication and Key Exchange Protocol specifically designed for secure IoT architectures. The proposed framework integrates post-quantum cryptographic primitives, including lattice-based key exchange mechanisms and hash-based authentication schemes, optimized for low computational overhead suitable for constrained IoT devices. The protocol ensures mutual authentication, forward secrecy, and resistance against quantum adversaries while maintaining minimal communication latency. Security analysis demonstrates robustness against replay, man-in-the-middle, and key-compromise attacks. Performance evaluation shows that the proposed solution achieves a balance between quantum security strength and resource efficiency, making it suitable for next-generation IoT deployments in smart cities, healthcare systems, and industrial automation.
Abstract The constant evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) concept involves the idea that all elements in the global network communication are reachable without the need for human intervention. In this context, the paramount concern is security, aiming to safeguard IoT communication against unauthorized access. According to the analysis, the security of the IoT communication framework relies on traditional cryptographic schemes like the RSA algorithm. Nevertheless, the latest developments in quantum computing and information processing pose a significant threat to these established schemes. Motivated by this fact, in this article, we proposed a novel quantum authentication and key agreement (QAKA) protocol that provides unconditional security against any classical and futuristic quantum threats. Our protocol ensures secure key agreement and mutual authentication based on quantum hashing with quantum passwords and quantum key distribution. The proposed scheme utilizes quantum teleportation and Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger states for secure data transfer among entities. Our work is simulated using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications tool to prove our protocol's formal correctness and security. The Burrows, Abadi, and Needham logic is applied to prove the goal of our protocol. Random oracle model for formal security analysis is presented in our work. Our protocol is also informally analyzed, considering the characteristics such as correctness, security against repudiation and the impossibility of cloning. The proposed protocol is compared with the related protocols in terms of various security features such as replay attacks, man‐in‐middle attacks and futuristic quantum attacks. Finally, the performance of the proposed protocol is presented, revealing superior efficacy when compared with classical authentication schemes and quantum protocols.
Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most representative application scenarios in the 5G and 6G era. The concurrent access of massive IoT devices definitely poses enormous communication, computation, and certificate management challenges to the wireless authentication. Moreover, the emergence of quantum computing makes classical cryptography-based authentication protocols, such as 5G-AKA, more easier to be broken. Facing the challenges posed by the massive concurrent authentication and quantum attacks, this paper proposes a lattice cryptography based group authentication scheme, where lattice-based aggregate signature algorithm and identity-based encryption (IBE) are leveraged to achieve simultaneous authentication of concurrent accessed devices. The proposed authentication scheme eliminates the process of public key certificate management, greatly reducing the storage overhead of core network. Moreover, the utilization of lattice cryptography enables the resistance of quantum attacks. The proposed solution does not rely on additional security assumptions such as security channel or trusted group center, making it more flexible to be deployed in actual network scenario. Finally, formal security analysis of the proposed protocol is provided with the tool ProVerif. It is demonstrated that the proposed protocol can satisfy the goals of identity privacy, authentication, data confidentiality and forward secrecy. In addition, compared with existing advanced solutions, the outperformance of the proposed scheme in terms of computation overhead, signaling overhead, communication overhead, and security properties is validated with simulations.
The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has connected billions of smart devices across healthcare, transportation, industrial automation, and smart home environments. While IoT has enhanced automation and data-driven decision-making, its widespread deployment has also increased the risk of cyberattacks. Conventional public-key cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) are vulnerable to future quantum computing attacks, particularly those based on Shor's algorithm. This paper proposes a Quantum-Resistant Cryptographic Framework (QRCF) for secure IoT communication using lattice-based cryptography integrated with lightweight authentication and efficient key management. The framework is designed to meet the computational limitations of IoT devices while ensuring long-term confidentiality and integrity. Performance evaluation demonstrates improvements in security resilience, authentication efficiency, and communication reliability compared with traditional cryptographic approaches. The proposed framework offers a scalable and future-ready solution for protecting IoT ecosystems in the post-quantum era.
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.
The Internet of Things (IoT) in agriculture (AgriIoT) networks are changing the way farming is being conducted by the means of precision sensors, UAVs, and automated control. However, these systems are subjected to security risks in terms of eavesdropping, spoofing, and tampering of data by the distributed wireless architecture. Classical cryptographic tools, which are useful over a short period of time, can be compromised by quantum adversaries. To address these risks, we investigate quantum photonic approaches for secure data transmission in smart agricultural IoT networks. Based on the advances in blockchain-controlled trust schemes, self-powered IoT, and sustainable hydroponics surveillance schemes, we introduce a hybrid design that combines quantum key distribution (QKD) with the photonic channels and consensus-based access control. Photonic technologies used to date in agronomy in sensor and control technologies are already being applied to secure communication. Findings indicate that there are better-secure key generation with channel noise, low chances of leakage, and protection against future quantum attacks. The publication is an outline to the next generation Agri-IoT systems in which quantum photonics will guarantee confidentiality, authenticity, and sustainability.