Compatible authentication and key agreement protocol for low power and lossy network in IoT environment

Abstract

Abstract Today, the Internet of Things can be described as the fastest-growing network that offers applications in a wide range of applications fields. This breadth has led to a wide range of IoT research. Applications of this network can be mentioned in various sectors such as e-health, smart homes, smart cities, and everything in smart cities via the Internet, where the collection and exchange of large amounts of data are undeniable. The IoT also supports large-scale low-power networks (LLNs) and uses the RPL protocol to route low-power, low-resource nodes on this large scale. Due to the exchange of sensitive data in this network, security is a critical issue. However, RPLs have many serious vulnerabilities, including the use of symmetric encryption that attackers can exploit. In addition, the privacy and security of network nodes are other challenges of this network. Therefore, there is a significant need for an effective and secure authentication scheme that enables IoT users to authenticate each other and share the session key to a secure meeting. In this paper, we aim to provide a secure protocol to enhance the security of the IoT and low-power nodes that use the RPL protocol against various network attacks. For this purpose, a key agreement protocol and authentication mechanism using ECC theory are proposed. Finally, we show that the proposed scheme is secure against routine network attacks and incurs a small computational and communication cost that is compatible with nodes with limited resources.