Post-quantum cryptographic authentication protocol for industrial IoT using lattice-based cryptography

Area of Science:

• Cryptography and Network Security
• Internet of Things (IoT) Security
• Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC)

Background:

• Industrial IoT (IIoT) environments require robust security against emerging quantum threats.
• Traditional cryptographic algorithms are vulnerable to quantum attacks.
• NIST has standardized lattice-based algorithms (ML-KEM, ML-DSA) for post-quantum security.

Purpose of the Study:

• To integrate NIST PQC algorithms into TLS 1.3 for IIoT authentication.
• To evaluate the performance of PQC-enabled TLS 1.3 on resource-constrained IIoT hardware.
• To assess the feasibility of post-quantum secure authentication in practical IIoT deployments.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of ML-KEM and ML-DSA within an X.509 certificate infrastructure.
• Performance evaluation on Raspberry Pi 4 using a liboqs-enabled TLS 1.3 stack.
• Measurement of key generation, encapsulation, decapsulation, and signature operations.

Main Results:

• Post-quantum TLS 1.3 (PQ TLS 1.3) demonstrated comparable handshake latency to conventional TLS on IIoT gateways.
• Certificate size emerged as the primary performance overhead.
• The study confirmed the practicality of PQC authentication in IIoT settings.

Conclusions:

• NIST PQC algorithms are viable for securing IIoT communications via TLS 1.3.
• Addressing certificate size is crucial for optimizing PQC performance in constrained environments.
• Further validation in field deployments and with diverse PQC candidates is recommended.