The rapid expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems has increased the need for communication mechanisms that can remain secure against emerging computational threats. Conventional asymmetric cryptographic schemes, including RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), are vulnerable to advances in quantum computing due to the ability of Shor's algorithm to undermine their underlying mathematical assumptions. To address these challenges, this paper presents PQ-IoT SecureCom, a quantum-resistant communication framework built using NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptographic primitives. The proposed framework employs ML-KEM (derived from Kyber) for secure key encapsulation and ML-DSA (derived from Dilithium) for digital authentication, combined with AESGCM to ensure data confidentiality and integrity. Additional security mechanisms, including PQC-based device certification, periodic session key updates, and nonce-based timestamp validation, are incorporated to mitigate replay and impersonation attacks. The framework also supports a hybrid operational mode that enables performance comparison between classical and postquantum cryptographic schemes. System behavior is monitored using a real-time dashboard that records cryptographic overhead, communication metrics, and detected security events. Experimental evaluation shows that ML-KEM and ML-DSA significantly enhance security while introducing computational overhead that remains acceptable for contemporary IoT devices. Through automated attack simulations and detailed event logging, PQ-IoT SecureCom demonstrates the practical feasibility of deploying scalable post-quantum security in IoT communication systems.
The rapid expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems has increased the need for communication mechanisms that can remain secure against emerging computational threats. Conventional asymmetric cryptographic schemes, including RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), are vulnerable to advances in quantum computing due to the ability of Shor's algorithm to undermine their underlying mathematical assumptions. To address these challenges, this paper presents PQ-IoT SecureCom, a quantum-resistant communication framework built using NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptographic primitives. The proposed framework employs ML-KEM (derived from Kyber) for secure key encapsulation and ML-DSA (derived from Dilithium) for digital authentication, combined with AESGCM to ensure data confidentiality and integrity. Additional security mechanisms, including PQC-based device certification, periodic session key updates, and nonce-based timestamp validation, are incorporated to mitigate replay and impersonation attacks. The framework also supports a hybrid operational mode that enables performance comparison between classical and postquantum cryptographic schemes. System behavior is monitored using a real-time dashboard that records cryptographic overhead, communication metrics, and detected security events. Experimental evaluation shows that ML-KEM and ML-DSA significantly enhance security while introducing computational overhead that remains acceptable for contemporary IoT devices. Through automated attack simulations and detailed event logging, PQ-IoT SecureCom demonstrates the practical feasibility of deploying scalable post-quantum security in IoT communication systems.
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.
The expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems has created a high demand for secure cryptographic solutions, even in a future with quantum computing capabilities. Traditional mappings, such as RSA or Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), are expected to be broken by Shor's algorithm, driving the realization of post-quantum cryptography (PQC). This work presents a simulative and prototypical framework for assessing PQC integration in IoT communication. With the liboqs library and NS-3 network simulator, along with the Python scripting language, we implement both NIST-standardized algorithms, such as Dilithium (for signatures) and Kyber (for key encapsulation), as well as the classical RSA and ECC baselines. IoT networks of 50-500 virtual nodes are simulated based on IEEE 802.15.4/6LoWPAN with RPL routing. Performance attributes, including encryption/decryption time, key length, packet delivery ratio, latency, and energy consumption, are collected and evaluated. Preliminary results indicate that PQC incurs additional handshake and key overhead, but is relatively practical, with an average overhead of15−25msper processed secure transaction. The effort provides a replicable testbed, showcasing what we consider the best and worst PQC has to offer for resource-constrained IoT. Targeted at master's students and researchers, this book provides an applied approach to investigate quantum-resilient security in IoT. It encourages future expansion to hardware-in-the-loop validation on embedded devices.
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.
The imminent advent of quantum computing threatens the long-term security of classical public-key cryptography, creating critical challenges for resource-constrained internet of things (IoT) environments.Hybrid cryptographic frameworks combining elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) with post-quantum cryptography (PQC) primitives have emerged as a transitional solution; however, their security properties remain insufficiently validated under semi-trusted infrastructure assumptions.This paper presents a comprehensive security evaluation of a hybrid ECC-KEM authentication and key agreement framework targeting IoT deployments.Using a dual-verification methodology that integrates formal symbolic analysis with the Tamarin-Prover and practical AI-assisted testing via the APSVer tool, we identify a critical impersonation vulnerability that enables a semi-trusted third party (TTP) to reconstruct PUF-based authentication material.To mitigate this flaw, we introduce a protocol enhancement incorporating ML-DSA post-quantum digital signatures and device-isolated key derivation.Formal verification confirms that the enhanced protocol achieves mutual authentication, session key secrecy, replay resistance, and effective isolation of the TTP.Experimental performance analysis demonstrates that the proposed security improvements introduce only a 12%-15% computational overhead, preserving feasibility for constrained IoT devices.The proposed framework provides a practical, quantum-resilient authentication architecture suitable for next-generation secure IoT deployments.
The rapid advancement of quantum computing poses significant threats to classical cryptographic methods, such as Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), which currently secure Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud communications. Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), particularly lattice-based schemes, has emerged as a promising alternative. CRYSTALS-Kyber, standardized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as ML-KEM, has shown efficiency and practicality for constrained IoT devices. Most existing research has focused on PQC within the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol. Consequently, a critical gap exists in understanding PQC’s performance in lightweight IoT protocols. These are Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP), particularly under adverse network conditions. To address this gap, this paper provides a systematic review of the literature on the network resilience and performance of CRYSTALS-Kyber when integrated into these protocols operating over lossy and high-latency networks. Additional challenges include non-standardized integration, resource limitations, and side-channel vulnerabilities. This review provides a structured synthesis of current knowledge, highlights unresolved trade-offs between security and efficiency, and outlines future research directions, including protocol-level optimization, lightweight signature schemes, and resilience testing of PQC-secured IoT protocols under realistic conditions.
The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices that use the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol poses significant security challenges in the emerging quantum computing era. Current Transport Layer Security (TLS) implementations rely on classical cryptographic algorithms vulnerable to Shor's algorithm. This paper proposes PQ-MQTT, a hybrid post-quantum secure communication protocol that integrates ML-KEM-768 with X25519 for key encapsulation and a lightweight session-key derivation mechanism optimized for resource-constrained IoT publishers. We present a formal security analysis under the Quantum Random Oracle Model (QROM), demonstrating resilience against store-now-decryptlater attacks. Experimental evaluation on the Raspberry Pi 4, ESP32, and Arduino Nano 33 platforms shows that PQ-MQTT achieves handshake latencies of127.3ms,412.7ms, and1,847.2ms, respectively, with 18.2 KB of additional memory overhead. A comparative analysis of pure post-quantum and classical TLS implementations shows energy reductions of23.5%−40.5%relative to pure PQC, achieved through our hybrid optimization approach, while maintaining 94.2 % throughput efficiency.