With the explosive growth in the number of IoT devices, the security of group communication has become a critical issue requiring urgent solutions. However, existing group key agreement protocols typically assume that all devices employ the same cryptographic algorithm, making them difficult to adapt to the heterogeneous environment prevalent in actual deployments where traditional cryptography and post-quantum cryptography devices coexist. Therefore, this paper proposes a group key agreement protocol that supports devices with heterogeneous algorithms, such as post-quantum devices (Kyber) and traditional devices (ECDH), to collaboratively perform key agreement within the same group. The protocol is based on the Abdalla compiler, groups devices according to their algorithm type, and introduces group leader nodes that support multiple algorithms simultaneously. The protocol adds only two rounds of interaction compared to the underlying two-party protocol, offering strong compatibility and manageable overhead. Security analysis shows that the security of the protocol can be reduced to the security of the underlying two-party protocols. Performance evaluation results indicate that, compared to existing schemes, this protocol achieves averagely 49% computational and 17.5% communication efficiency in mixed-device scenarios, making it suitable for resource-constrained IoT environments.
With the explosive growth in the number of IoT devices, the security of group communication has become a critical issue requiring urgent solutions. However, existing group key agreement protocols typically assume that all devices employ the same cryptographic algorithm, making them difficult to adapt to the heterogeneous environment prevalent in actual deployments where traditional cryptography and post-quantum cryptography devices coexist. Therefore, this paper proposes a group key agreement protocol that supports devices with heterogeneous algorithms, such as post-quantum devices (Kyber) and traditional devices (ECDH), to collaboratively perform key agreement within the same group. The protocol is based on the Abdalla compiler, groups devices according to their algorithm type, and introduces group leader nodes that support multiple algorithms simultaneously. The protocol adds only two rounds of interaction compared to the underlying two-party protocol, offering strong compatibility and manageable overhead. Security analysis shows that the security of the protocol can be reduced to the security of the underlying two-party protocols. Performance evaluation results indicate that, compared to existing schemes, this protocol achieves averagely 49% computational and 17.5% communication efficiency in mixed-device scenarios, making it suitable for resource-constrained IoT environments.
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.
As smart home devices become more widely available, their limited resources and potential exposure to various types of cyber-attacks make it difficult for the traditional security protocols to remain effective. Cloud-enabled smart home IoT platforms have helped to improve device intelligence and overall efficiency when controlling them, but the additional use of cloud computing has also created additional complexity in controlling these devices through user-defined automated rules and remote access via vendor apps. Conventional security schemes do not consider these types of control models, nor do they provide a reasonable balance of the additional computational overhead introduced, the efficiency of communications, and the level of security provided. Additionally, with the introduction of quantum computing, current public key cryptography primitives will become obsolete, necessitating the requirement for an adoption of post-quantum security measures. To overcome these issues, this paper presents a proposal for a lightweight mutual authentication and key agreement scheme that employs post-quantum cryptography primitives to facilitate a secure interaction between the user’s cloud platforms, smart home devices, and the user. The protocol also supports remote secure control, while providing the resistance to both classical and quantum attacks. The proposed protocol has been thoroughly evaluated through formal verification using the ProVerif tool and multiple heuristic evaluation techniques. Additionally, the security features of the proposed protocol have been compared to those of several existing methods, providing evidence that it offers improved security features, forward secrecy, and quantum resistance while maintaining a lightweight profile compatible with the limitations of modern smart homes.
Quantum computing poses a threat on current cryptography methods, prompting initiatives such as the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) standardization process toward developing post-quantum cryptographic tools. This process concentrates on deploying “key encapsulation mechanisms” and “signature schemes”, mainly focusing on Group Authenticated key exchange (GAKE), which is crucial for secure group communication while ensuring authentication is immune to quantum attacks. Despite various two-party key exchange designs adaptable for group key exchange protocols with multiple parties, experts face challenges in secure group interactions in a post-quantum environment due to the lack of such group protocols solutions. Addressing the necessity of secure group communication in IoTs, we proposed a GAKE protocol. This paper presents its design and implementation secure under QROM; we compared our initial findings on the “Saber-based GAKE” with a Kyber-based GAKE implementation named “Complied Kyber” proposed by Pablos, focusing on IoTs. Our findings show better efficiency than “Compiled Kyber” regarding overall communication duration, especially when involving up to 2000 participants in group communication. Furthermore, thorough investigation and calculations confirm the Saber-GAKE protocol’s interoperability with IoT contexts. The protocol has worthy computational efficiency, with execution speeds of 0.064 ms on ARM Cortex-M4 and 1.56 ms on ARM Cortex-M0 systems. The memory use is well below the allowed limits, with 50.86 KB on Cortex-M4 and 35.84 KB on Cortex-M0. The performance data validate that the Saber-GAKE protocol can effectively and safely function on IoT devices with limited resources, offering strong protection against quantum computing assaults.
The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) ushers in a significant potential to integrate individuals, devices, and data, leading to a profound change in our professional and social environments. The small, resource-constrained IoT devices are usually deployed to collect various types of critical data in remote or unmonitored locations. Due to extensive interconnectivity, limited resources, and inadequate security design, IoT systems are vulnerable to communication-specific cyber threats, which aim to disrupt operations, steal sensitive information, or cause damage. To resolve the security concerns in IoT communications, many recent efforts have been devoted to designing authenticated key agreement protocols for IoT systems. However, not only most of the existing solutions fail to adopt cost-effective techniques for resource-limited IoT devices, but also they ignore the differentiation among various data types in the established session keys. A few approaches use traditional physical unclonable functions (PUFs) to address resource concerns, yet they introduce new security issues into IoT systems. Once the PUF cryptographic information is compromised by machine learning attacks, the entire authentication framework collapses. Therefore, in this paper we propose an authenticated key agreement protocol for device-to-gateway communication in IoT systems based on Chebyshev polynomial and probability-based PUF. We examine the proposed protocol’s security features through formal security validation. We also conduct performance evaluation through a simulation-oriented study, and the results clearly prove that the proposed protocol offers superior security and privacy, while maintaining low computational overhead.
Abstract With the emergence of quantum computing, traditional cryptographic algorithms face the threat of being compromised, necessitating the development of quantum-resistant alternatives. The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm presents unique security challenges due to its vast scale and resource-constrained devices. This research aims to address these challenges by proposing a novel quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithm QuantIoT specifically designed for securing IoT devices. The research begins by evaluating the vulnerabilities of existing cryptographic algorithms against quantum attacks and identifying the need for post-quantum solutions in the IoT context. Various families of post quantum cryptographic algorithms, including lattice based and hash based schemes, are examined to assess their suitability for securing IoT devices. Based on the analysis, a novel quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithm tailored for IoT devices is proposed. The algorithm takes into account the limited computational capabilities, power constraints, and communication requirements of IoT devices while offering strong defence against both conventional and quantum threats. The proposed algorithm is evaluated through simulations and practical experiments on a representative IoT platform. Performance metrics, including computation time, memory usage, and communication overhead, are measured and compared against traditional cryptographic algorithms. The results show that the suggested quantum-resistant technique for protecting IoT devices is workable and effective. This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on post-quantum cryptography and provides valuable insights for the design and implementation of secure IoT systems in the face of quantum threats.
Quantum computing has redefined the assumed complexity of different computational tasks, which implies the need for new cryptographic tools that can be considered secure even in the presence of entities that may be able to execute quantum algorithms. In particular, this poses significant challenges for the adaptation of cryptographic implementations, which are particularly relevant in the IoT scenario, where resources are especially limited. In this work, we report on a simple cryptographic protocol for group key establishment, where n > 2 devices interact to establish a key to secure their communication. Our design can actually be seen as a so-called key transport, where a small set of devices cooperatively choose a key that is subsequently distributed to all users over an insecure (and somewhat unstable) network using only cryptographic tools that are claimed to be post-quantum, i.e., resistant to quantum attacks. We give a theoretical description and also describe our experimental results implementing our protocol within networks up to 16 nodes based on ARM Cortex-M4. We believe that this design is a first proof-of-concept of a post-quantum group key exchange protocol in the IoT scenario.