A Lightweight Nature Heterogeneous Generalized Signcryption (HGSC) Scheme for Named Data Networking-Enabled Internet of Things

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) is the collection of different types of smart objects like mobile phones, sensors, cars, smart cities, smart buildings, and healthcare, which can provide a quality life to humans around the globe. These smart objects sense and produce a huge amount of data for distribution. The current hostcentric networking paradigm is not that scalable to provide a suitable solution to the idea of IoT. For scalable connectivity and efficient distribution, Named Data Networking (NDN) has been envisioned as a promising solution for future internet architecture. On the other hand, the significant issues regarding the adaptation of NDN with IoT possess security concerns such as authentication, confidentiality, integrity, and forward secrecy. As IoT is a heterogeneous environment, it demands a different type of security, according to the environmental situation such as public key infrastructure (PKI), identity-based cryptosystem (IBC), and certificateless cryptosystem (CLC). This paper presents a new concept of CLC to IBC heterogeneous generalized signcryption for the first time to fulfil the prime security requirements of NDN-based IoT. The proposed scheme provides the security properties according to situational needs without disturbing the structural policy of NDN. Considering the resource-constrained nature of IoT, we used a lightweight type of elliptic curve called the hyperelliptic curve cryptosystem which offers the same level of security as that of bilinear pairing and an elliptic curve cryptosystem using a minimum key size. Further, we compare the proposed scheme with recently proposed identity-based as well as certificateless generalized signcryption schemes, and the results give satisfactory outputs in terms of computational and communication resources. Furthermore, we simulate the proposed scheme with Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA), and the results show that our scheme is valid and safe. Additionally, we provide a practical scenario of the proposed on NDN with an IoT-based smart city.