Hash-Based Signature for Flexibility Authentication of IoT Devices

Abstract

5G provides a unified authentication architecture and access management for IoT (Internet of Things) devices. But existing authentication services cannot cover massive IoT devices with various computing capabilities. In addition, with the development of quantum computing, authentication schemes based on traditional digital signature technology may not be as secure as we expected. This paper studies the authentication mechanism from the user equipment to the external data network in 5G and proposed an authentication protocol prototype that conforms to the Third Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) standard. This prototype can accommodate various Hash-based signature technologies, applying their advantages in resource consumption to meet the authentication requirements of multiple types of IoT devices. The operation of the proposed authentication scheme is mainly based on the Hash function, which is more efficient than the traditional authentication scheme. It provides flexible and high-quality authentication services for IoT devices cluster in the 5G environment combining the advantages of Hash-based signature technology and 5G architecture.