Physical Unclonable Function and Hashing Are All You Need to Mutually Authenticate IoT Devices

Area of Science:

• Cybersecurity
• Computer Engineering
• Internet of Things (IoT)

Background:

• The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly expanding across diverse sectors, necessitating robust security measures.
• Existing authentication methods often struggle with the limited resources (storage, computation) of IoT devices.
• Public network communication for IoT devices increases vulnerability to cloning and side-channel attacks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a lightweight mutual two-factor authentication mechanism for IoT devices and servers.
• To enhance the security of IoT hardware against physical and network-based attacks.
• To ensure efficient authentication and session key agreement suitable for resource-constrained environments.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel lightweight mutual two-factor authentication protocol.
• Integration of Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) for hardware-based security.
• Utilization of a hashing algorithm for secure authentication and key agreement.
• Formal security analysis to validate protocol robustness.

Main Results:

• The proposed mechanism provides mutual authentication between IoT devices and servers.
• Demonstrated security against various attack scenarios through formal analysis.
• Achieved high efficiency in terms of memory, server capacity, and energy consumption.
• Low complexity cost and communication overhead confirmed.

Conclusions:

• The developed lightweight authentication mechanism is highly suitable for security-critical IoT applications.
• The PUF-based approach effectively addresses the unique challenges of resource-constrained IoT devices.
• The protocol offers a compelling solution for securing the expanding IoT ecosystem.