This paper introduces PQ-LiteKEM, a formally verified, lightweight post-quantum security protocol for energy- and resource-constrained Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices. Addressing near-term quantum threats and emerging regulatory mandates such as the EU Cyber Resilience Act, the protocol mitigates the ‘harvest-now-decrypt-later’ (HNDL) quantum threat by securing sensitive physiological data over low-powered wireless channels. PQ-LiteKEM's architecture pairs lightweight symmetric-key mutual authentication, tied to dynamic hardware fingerprints, with ML-KEM-512 encapsulation and AES-256-GCM authenticated encryption. Formal verification through ProVerif and Scyther confirms security against key compromise, replay, and man-in-the-middle attacks, with provable session forward secrecy, mutual authentication, and session integrity. PQ-LiteKEM is validated on an ESP32-S3-powered wearable sensor communicating with a Raspberry Pi edge gateway over a BLE testbed. Performance profiling measured a total cryptographic latency of 5.9 ms and a peak memory footprint of 9 kB, approximately 0.1% of available RAM. These results show that post-quantum cryptographic guarantees are achievable on constrained medical sensors without sacrificing runtime efficiency, and that the approach generalises beyond BLE to other wireless channels.
This paper introduces PQ-LiteKEM, a formally verified, lightweight post-quantum security protocol for energy- and resource-constrained Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices. Addressing near-term quantum threats and emerging regulatory mandates such as the EU Cyber Resilience Act, the protocol mitigates the ‘harvest-now-decrypt-later’ (HNDL) quantum threat by securing sensitive physiological data over low-powered wireless channels. PQ-LiteKEM's architecture pairs lightweight symmetric-key mutual authentication, tied to dynamic hardware fingerprints, with ML-KEM-512 encapsulation and AES-256-GCM authenticated encryption. Formal verification through ProVerif and Scyther confirms security against key compromise, replay, and man-in-the-middle attacks, with provable session forward secrecy, mutual authentication, and session integrity. PQ-LiteKEM is validated on an ESP32-S3-powered wearable sensor communicating with a Raspberry Pi edge gateway over a BLE testbed. Performance profiling measured a total cryptographic latency of 5.9 ms and a peak memory footprint of 9 kB, approximately 0.1% of available RAM. These results show that post-quantum cryptographic guarantees are achievable on constrained medical sensors without sacrificing runtime efficiency, and that the approach generalises beyond BLE to other wireless channels.
The emergence and growth of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) have transformed the way healthcare services are delivered, but this growth comes with its own security challenges, especially with the emergence of quantum computing. This paper presents a lightweight, privacy-preserving authentication scheme for edge-based IoMT environments, integrating CRYSTALS-Kyber Key Encapsulation Mechanism (KEM) to securely establish session keys between participating entities and resilience against quantum attacks, while CRYSTALS-Dilithium is utilized as the digital signature scheme to ensure message integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation. These NIST-standardized post-quantum primitives collectively strengthen the system's resistance against quantum adversaries and enhance overall cryptographic robustness. The proposed system comprises two phases: Registration and Authentication. During registration, patients, wearable devices that utilize Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs), and medical specialists register with a Trusted Authority via edge nodes. The authentication phase encompasses mutual authentication among patients, devices, medical specialists, edge nodes, and cloud servers, ensuring that only authorized entities access sensitive health information. In addition, the proposed scheme employs the formal security properties, such as authenticity and secrecy, are verified using the AVISPA tool under the Dolev-Yao model, with results confirming that all defined goals are achieved and no attacks are found. Performance evaluations indicate that the scheme is computationally efficient and suitable for resource-constrained IoMT devices. Furthermore, BAN logic is employed to formally verify the correctness of the authentication protocol, demonstrating that mutual authentication is securely established among the participating entities under well-defined trust assumptions. By integrating post-quantum cryptographic techniques, this authentication framework addresses emerging security challenges posed by quantum computing, aligning with the objectives of enhancing edge-based consumer electronics devices and Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems with post-quantum cryptosystems.
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.
The emergence of quantum computing threatens classical cryptographic systems, including RSA and ECC, potentially compromising the security of pervasive Internet of Things (IoT) deployments. Resourceconstrained IoT devices—such as sensors, embedded controllers, and microcontrollers—face significant challenges in adopting post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) protocols due to computational, memory, and energy limitations. This paper proposes AQ-PQC, an adaptive lightweight hybrid key exchange protocol combining Kyber lattice-based KEM and lightweight elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), specifically designed for constrained devices. AQ-PQC introduces a dynamic parameter tuning algorithm that adjusts key sizes, handshake rounds, and compression ratios based on real-time device state and network conditions. Formal security analysis under the IND-CCA model demonstrates quantum-resistance and forward secrecy. Extensive hardware implementation on Raspberry Pi 4 and ESP32 devices reveals a significant reduction in handshake latency, energy consumption, and memory footprint compared to conventional PQC protocols. The proposed framework provides a practical, reproducible, and secure methodology for post-quantum IoT communications, supporting heterogeneous and resource-limited networks.
With IoMT, healthcare is being changed rapidly by allowing data from patients to be monitored and managed remotely. But the fact that IoMT devices have weak resources, need strict timing and send sensitive data makes it challenging to secure and operate efficiently. As quantum computers are almost ready to break conventional cryptography, it is important to create post-quantum cryptographic methods for the IoMT. The paper introduces an Energy-Saving, Layered and Safe Routing Protocol (EEMSRP) for use in post-quantum cryptographic networks in the IoMT. It includes several layers of security, using lattice-based post-quantum cryptography and improved routing methods to cut back on energy use. The framework uses hierarchical architecture to organize devices, adopts clustering and relies on lightweight algorithms for post-quantum key exchange. Results from simulations find that EEMSRP is able to save up to 30% of the energy used by existing quantum-resistant protocols, but still remains secure against eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks and quantum-based cryptanalysis. Because of its multi-layer defense, the protocol guarantees the privacy, accuracy and continued accessibility of IoMT data. This research provides a base for upcoming secure and power-efficient communication standards in the post-quantum world, which is important for guarding private medical details and guaranteeing reliable IoMT use.
In smart home environments, Harvest Now and Decrypt Later (HNDL) attacks pose a significant threat to long-term privacy. Traditional elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)-based authentication systems can be neutralized using the Shor algorithm on quantum computers, making it difficult to mitigate these threats. In this study, we propose a hybrid authentication and key exchange protocol designed to address the resource constraints of smart home systems, while introducing the NIST standard post quantum cryptography (PQC) to defend against HNDL attacks. The proposed protocol operates through four concise steps: (1) Setup and Registration for identities and pre-shared keys (PSK); (2) Key Agreement between the user and gateway using ML-KEM; (3) Session Key Distribution from the gateway to the smart device (SD) using the PSK; and (4) Mutual Authentication to verify the established key across all nodes. Formal verification using ProVerif and Scyther confirms the security of the proposed protocol, which achieved a communication cost of 7424 bits, representing a 44–82% reduction compared to existing PQC protocols. Furthermore, the proposed protocol demonstrated an execution time of 0.3205 ms, achieving a 74–90% and 60–74% improvement over existing ECC-based and PQC-based methods, respectively. Consequently, this study presents a quantum-resistant authentication protocol for smart-home environments that achieves a practical balance between security and efficiency.
The classic methods of encryption and ciphering techniques have a major threat due to the rapid growth of quantum computing. This is particularly true for the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) where sensitive patients’ data needs to be protected in terms of confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity. RSA and ECC serve as two examples of public key cryptographic algorithms that are highly vulnerable to quantum attacks especially the Shor’s and Grover’s algorithm. In the context of resource constrained IoMT systems, this thesis proposes a new hash-based hybrid cryptographic algorithm that is resilient to post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) attacks. In order to achieve resistance against quantum threats the proposed method uses hash-based digital signatures such as XMSS, SPHINCS+, or symmetric encryption like AES-256 with higher key sizes. In the Qiskit environment (Python, Anaconda Navigator, and Jupyter Notebook), Grover’s algorithm is modeled to simulate quantum threats. The proposed method is tested through quantum circuit analysis to evaluate their robustness. Our results will prove that the hybrid scheme, while remaining lightweight and suitable for real-time medical applications, significantly lowers the efficiency gains of quantum attacks. The proposed method will bridge the gap between the theoretical world of PQC and the practical world of IoMT networks, improving the long-term security and trust in critical healthcare systems.