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Sensors

Lightweight Anonymous Group Authentication and Quantum-Cloud Key Distribution Based on PUF for Classical Network Environments

Huanjie Zhang, Yang Chen, Shenghao Chen, Zilong Zhao, Dexin Zhu

Published Jul 31, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

With the rapid development of quantum computing, in response to its disruptive threats to traditional cryptosystems and the urgent demand for lightweight and highly scalable secure group communication among resource-constrained devices in large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios, this paper proposes a lightweight anonymous group authentication scheme that integrates Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), distributed Gossip algorithms, and quantum key distribution. By exploiting the uniqueness and unclonability derived from the inherent physical characteristics of PUF hardware, the scheme fundamentally eliminates attack vectors against quantum computers without requiring devices to pre-store any secret keys in their memory, while the QKCS pre-provisions CRPs and key seeds, which is the standard enrollment procedure in PUF-based systems. Combined with information-theoretically secure quantum keys as session keys, it forms a dual protection mechanism: anti-forgery at the physical layer and anti-quantum attack at the cryptographic layer. Innovatively, the Gossip algorithm is deeply integrated with group key agreement, converting global broadcast into local iterative interactions between nodes, which effectively alleviates broadcast storms and improves the scalability and fault tolerance of the protocol. Meanwhile, a pseudonym mechanism is introduced to achieve anonymous identity protection, and a dynamic key update strategy guarantees forward and backward security when members join or leave the group. Formal verification based on BAN logic and security analysis show that the proposed protocol can resist typical attacks such as replay attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, and impersonation attacks. Performance evaluations demonstrate that our scheme outperforms existing comparable schemes in terms of computational cost, communication overhead, and dynamic group management efficiency, demonstrating its potential for resource-constrained IoT environments, pending further validation on real hardware platforms.

DOI
10.3390/s26154840

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With the rapid development of quantum computing, in response to its disruptive threats to traditional cryptosystems and the urgent demand for lightweight and highly scalable secure group communication among resource-constrained devices in large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios, this paper proposes a lightweight anonymous group authentication scheme that integrates Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), distributed Gossip algorithms, and quantum key distribution. By exploiting the uniqueness and unclonability derived from the inherent physical characteristics of PUF hardware, the scheme fundamentally eliminates attack vectors against quantum computers without requiring devices to pre-store any secret keys in their memory, while the QKCS pre-provisions CRPs and key seeds, which is the standard enrollment procedure in PUF-based systems. Combined with information-theoretically secure quantum keys as session keys, it forms a dual protection mechanism: anti-forgery at the physical layer and anti-quantum attack at the cryptographic layer. Innovatively, the Gossip algorithm is deeply integrated with group key agreement, converting global broadcast into local iterative interactions between nodes, which effectively alleviates broadcast storms and improves the scalability and fault tolerance of the protocol. Meanwhile, a pseudonym mechanism is introduced to achieve anonymous identity protection, and a dynamic key update strategy guarantees forward and backward security when members join or leave the group. Formal verification based on BAN logic and security analysis show that the proposed protocol can resist typical attacks such as replay attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, and impersonation attacks. Performance evaluations demonstrate that our scheme outperforms existing comparable schemes in terms of computational cost, communication overhead, and dynamic group management efficiency, demonstrating its potential for resource-constrained IoT environments, pending further validation on real hardware platforms.
The Internet of Things (IoT), as a new type of communication network, is involved in developing and applying secure transmission and storing a large amount of sensitive information. Due to the IoT devices' constrained resources, high connection costs, sluggish transmission speeds, and the inapplicability of security fundamentals like public key methods and digital signatures for simple device authentication, this paper presents a lightweight anonymous key-sharing authentication protocol for IoT devices. The protocol utilizes the tamper-resistant and anti-cloning properties of Hardware Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) to generate shared keys. In addition, it incorporates security primitives such as the MASK algorithm and Hash functions. The security analysis and verification using Ban logic and the proper tool ProVerif demonstrate that the protocol can defend against attacks such as man-in-the-middle, de-synchronization, impersonation, and modeling attacks. Compared with other protocols, this protocol exhibits the characteristics of low computational cost, minimal communication overhead and storage capacity, and high-security performance, making it suitable for secure communication and transmission in resource-constrained devices.
Securing applications that gather and transfer confidential information has become a critical challenge in the rapidly evolving Internet of Things (IoT) landscape. Such data’s authenticity, integrity, and confidentiality must be guaranteed while reducing security functions’ computation and communication overhead to accommodate the numerous constrained devices involved. Group authentication and key management are essential aspects of IoT security, but existing protocols often need to be more computationally expensive for IoT applications and must take care of anonymization. Consequently, IoT devices may be open to potential cyber-attacks due to the use of simple security primitives. Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) can enable in lightweight approach to authentication and key distribution among group members. The factorial tree and Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) can minimize communication messages required to renew the keys. This paper presents a novel protocol, Anonymized Lightweight PUF-based group Authentication with Key distribution (ALPAK) for IoT Devices, which improves the PUF-Based Lightweight Group Authentication and Key Distribution Protocol (PLGAKD) to enhance the anonymity of IoT devices. The paper further presents the formal verification of the ALPAK scheme with the Scyther tool and detailed security analysis.
Abstract This paper presents a scalable group authentication and key agreement protocol for dynamic IoT environments that integrates Physical Unclonable Function (PUF)-derived device bases with inner product space projections. During registration, each device is assigned a private basis Bi{\mathcal {B}}_iBi​ B i derived from its PUF responses, enabling efficient group authentication without per-device centralized verification and thereby mitigating long-term reliance on the group manager (GM). The protocol provides single-broadcast operations for member joining and leaving as well as decentralized group key updates. Formal security analysis under the Real-or-Random (ROR) model and experimental evaluation demonstrate robustness against common attacks, low communication overhead (6.5- −-− - 7.9 KB for 100 devices), and low authentication latency (1.135 ms for members and 0.051 ms for guests).
The Internet of Things (IoT) has ushered in significant advancements in networked technologies, yet it simultaneously raises concerns about the security and privacy of connected devices. Traditional authentication methods based on cryptographic protocols are increasingly vulnerable to attacks as the number of devices grows and attackers develop more sophisticated strategies. In this paper, we propose a novel quantum-based authentication method using Quantum Physical Unclonable Functions (QPUFs) to address the security challenges in IoT devices. Quantum PUFs exploit the inherent quantum properties of devices to generate unique, unclonable responses to challenges, providing a high level of security and resilience against attacks such as cloning, spoofing, and interception. We present the architecture of the proposed quantum authentication system, discuss the challenge-response protocol, and evaluate the system’s performance. Experimental results show that this approach offers strong security guarantees with minimal computational overhead. We Evaluate the Security, Scalability of our approach in simulated adverse IoT environment.
Abstract Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology enables bidirectional communication and energy interaction between electric vehicles and the power grid. To ensure real-time response and secure communication, authentication protocols in V2G must provide privacy protection, maintain lightweight computation, and resist various malicious attacks. However, the advancement of quantum computing poses a significant threat to the security of classical cryptographic systems. Furthermore, as vehicles and charging piles are often exposed in public areas and may operate offline, the information stored within these devices requires robust physical protection.To address these challenges, this paper proposes a PUF-based quantum authentication and key agreement protocol for V2G scenarios, which deeply binds classical PUF responses with quantum gate transformation techniques to achieve an efficient joint verification mechanism. The protocol utilizes quantum channels as tamper-proof transmission media to provide secure verification for pre-shared PUF credentials. By fusing classical and quantum communication with hash functions, the proposed scheme achieves lightweight, anonymous, mutual, and dual-factor identity authentication alongside secure key agreement. This integration ensures both communication security and participant privacy. Security analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is lightweight in edge-side classical computation. Under strict system assumptions, it can provide sufficient security and efficiency guarantees for the system, offering a valuable reference solution for V2G networks.
Peer to Peer (P2P) or direct connection IoT has become increasingly popular owing to its lower latency and higher privacy compared to database-driven or server-based IoT. However, wireless vulnerabilities raise severe concerns on IoT device-to-device communication. This is further aggravated by the challenge to achieve lightweight direct mutual authentication and secure key exchange between IoT peer nodes in P2P IoT applications. Physical unclonable function (PUF) is a key enabler to lightweight, low-power and secure authentication of resource-constrained devices in IoT. Nevertheless, current PUF-enabled authentication protocols, with or without the challenge-response pairs (CRPs) of each of its interlocutors stored in the verifier’s side, are incompatible for P2P IoT scenarios due to the security, storage and computing power limitations of IoT devices. To solve this problem, a new lightweight PUF-based mutual authentication and key-exchange protocol is proposed. It allows two resource-constrained PUF embedded endpoint devices to authenticate each other directly without the need for local storage of CRP or any private secrets, and simultaneously establish the session key for secure data exchange without resorting to public-key algorithm. The proposed protocol is evaluated using the Mao and Boyd logic as well as the automatic security analysis tool ProVerif to corroborate its mutual authenticity, secrecy, and resistance against replay and man-in-the-middle attacks. Using two Avnet Ultra96-V2 boards to emulate the two IoT endpoint devices of a network, a physical prototype system is also constructed to demonstrate and validate the feasibility of the proposed secure P2P connection scheme.