IHIBE: A Hierarchical and Delegated Access Control Mechanism for IoT Environments

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Distributed Systems

Background:

• Securing Internet of Things (IoT) environments against unauthorized access is critical for user privacy and data safety.
• Existing IoT security solutions often face challenges with scalability and computational overhead for data owners.
• Hierarchical Identity-Based Encryption (HIBE) offers a promising cryptographic approach for managing access control in complex networks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and evaluate the novel IHIBE framework, integrating IOTA and HIBE for enhanced IoT security and scalability.
• To analyze the performance differences of the IHIBE framework across different hardware platforms, specifically Raspberry Pi 4 and AWS.
• To determine optimal configurations for identity policy depth based on system delay tolerance.

Main Methods:

• Developed the IHIBE framework by combining IOTA (a distributed ledger technology) with Hierarchical Identity-Based Encryption (HIBE).
• Conducted empirical performance evaluations, measuring access rights delegation and verification times on Raspberry Pi 4 and AWS.
• Performed security assessments, including simulated scenarios of token theft and authority compromise, to validate security mechanisms.

Main Results:

• The IHIBE framework demonstrated a significant performance advantage on Raspberry Pi 4 over AWS for access rights delegation, exceeding AWS by over 250%.
• Optimal identity policy depths were identified: 640 identities on AWS and Raspberry Pi 4 for higher delay tolerance, and 320 (AWS) vs. 160 (Raspberry Pi 4) for lower delay tolerance.
• The system exhibited practical viability with minimal operational time differences compared to existing schemes, especially in access rights verification (33.35% difference).
• Security mechanisms like challenge-response and last-word challenge (LWC) proved effective against simulated threats.

Conclusions:

• The IHIBE framework offers a scalable and secure solution for IoT access control, leveraging the strengths of IOTA and HIBE.
• Platform choice significantly impacts IoT system performance, with edge devices like Raspberry Pi 4 showing notable advantages in specific operations.
• The study provides valuable insights for designing and deploying efficient, secure, and scalable IoT architectures.