iAKA-CIoT: An Improved Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme for Cloud Enabled Internet of Things Using Physical...

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Network Engineering

Background:

• Cloud-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) systems offer convenient services by collecting and analyzing vast amounts of heterogeneous data.
• Secure authentication and key agreement are critical for user and data privacy in cloud-IoT environments.
• Existing authentication schemes in cloud-IoT are vulnerable to security threats, compromising essential security requirements.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and demonstrate security vulnerabilities in previous authentication schemes for cloud-enabled IoT.
• To propose an improved, secure authentication and key agreement scheme for cloud-enabled IoT environments utilizing Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF).
• To rigorously evaluate the proposed scheme's security and performance against existing solutions.

Main Methods:

• Security analysis included informal, formal (mathematical), and simulation-based approaches.
• The Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool and the Real-Or-Random (ROR) model were employed for formal verification.
• Performance and security properties were benchmarked against other relevant authentication schemes.

Main Results:

• The previous authentication scheme was found to contain significant security threats, failing to meet essential security requirements.
• The proposed PUF-based authentication and key agreement scheme demonstrates enhanced security against identified threats.
• Comparative analysis confirmed the proposed scheme's superior security level and efficiency compared to existing contemporary schemes.

Conclusions:

• The proposed authentication and key agreement scheme effectively overcomes security threats in cloud-enabled IoT systems.
• The scheme provides a robust solution for ensuring user and data privacy in cloud-IoT communications.
• The enhanced security and efficiency make the proposed scheme suitable for practical deployment in cloud-enabled IoT environments.