Security and Privacy Support in 6LoWPAN-based Internet of Things Environmens

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) is a providential communication paradigm, reshaping everyone’s life by rendering characteristics, such as controlling and monitoring the connected smart objects. Usu ally, IoT devices are constricted in computational, communication, power, and memory resources and are commonly employed in various real-world applications. Thus, besides bringing ease to human lives, these devices are susceptible to different threats and security challenges. Therefore, it is imperative to address the security and privacy concerns in the resource-constricted IoT envi ronments. This thesis focuses on the security and privacy of the IoT environments and presents several authentication and key exchange (AKE) schemes for this purpose. Firstly, a lightweight AKE scheme for 6LoWPAN is presented using an authenticated encryption algorithm and hash function (SHA-256) in which, after successful authentication, sensor nodes (SNs) and the cen tral server can establish the secret key for secure communications. The scheme ensures header verification during the AKE process without using IP security protocol and, thus, has low commu nication and computational overheads. Secondly, the thesis presents a Lightweight Authentication Scheme for 6LoWPAN Environment (LAS-6LE), which first verifies the legitimacy of data dis patching SNs and then establishes a secret key between the server and SNs to achieve information confidentiality. Thirdly, this thesis presents a resource-efficient secure remote user authentication scheme for 6LoWPAN-based IoT networks that achieves the authentication of remote users and enables the users and network entities to establish private session keys between themselves for in decipherable communication. To this end, the scheme uses hash function (SHA-160), exclusive OR operation, and symmetric encryption primitive. Fourthly, this thesis presents a lightweight user AKE scheme for 6LoWPAN-based smart home networks (LAKE-6SH) to achieve authen ticity of remote users and establish private session keys between the users and network entities for encrypted communication by employing hash function (SHA-256), exclusive-OR operation, and an authenticated encryption primitive. Lastly, a new lightweight cryptography (LWC)-based AuthentiCation (AC) protocol for smart gird systems called LACP-SG is presented. The proto col employs the LWC-based hash function, Esch256, and authenticated encryption to accomplish the AC phase. LACP-SG assures secure data exchange between smart meter (SM) and server by validating the authenticity of SM. Besides, for encrypted communication, LACP-SG enables SM and the server to establish a session key. For validating the logical correctness and resilience of the proposed schemes against various attacks, Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic, Scyther-based analysis, informal security analysis, and formal security analysis are considered. It is found that the proposed schemes incur fewer resources in 6LoWPAN environments, reduce computational, storage, and communication overheads of the network, and provide better security and privacy compared to the state-of-the-art.