A verifiably secure and robust authentication protocol for synergistically-assisted IoD deployment drones.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Robotics

Background:

• Drones have limited resources, necessitating clustered operations for complex tasks.
• Effective collaboration in drone clusters requires robust, lightweight authentication.
• Existing security protocols for Internet of Drones (IoD) are vulnerable to various attacks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel, secure, and efficient authentication protocol for drone clusters.
• To address vulnerabilities in current IoD security mechanisms.
• To enable intelligent decision-making and complex tactical task completion in drone swarms.

Main Methods:

• Developed a protocol using elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), one-way hash, concatenation, and XOR operations.
• Formally analyzed security using BAN logic and ProVerif.
• Informally validated through realistic discussions and illustrations.

Main Results:

• The proposed protocol ensures robust security against common cyber threats.
• Demonstrated significant efficiency improvements: 63.87% in communication cost and 66.46% in computational cost.
• Successfully enables secure information fusion and coordination in drone clusters.

Conclusions:

• The novel ECC-based protocol provides a secure and efficient solution for drone cluster authentication.
• The protocol is essential for the reliable deployment of Internet of Drones (IoD) systems.
• Offers a superior alternative to existing methods for IoD security and performance.