A Secure and Lightweight Authenticated Key Agreement Protocol for Distributed IoT Applications

International audienceInternet of Things (IoT) is growing too fast and it is being deployed in various domains such as Smart Homes, Smart City, Healthcare, etc. Security in IoT environments is critical, as information between IoT devices and end-users needs to be shared securely. Therefore, IoT systems require protecting two critical aspects, which are confidential data and identity management. However, IoT devices have many constraints, including limitations in computation, power, memory and energy. In this paper, we present a fast and secure authenticated key agreement protocol based on elliptic curve cryptography. The proposed protocol is used for distributed IoT applications. Therefore, a Trusted Third Party (TTP) is used to perform the registration phases for users and IoT devices. With respect to distributed networks, and after the registration phases are accomplished, the end-user can communicate and obtain information straightaway from the sensor nodes. The informal security of the proposed protocol is analyzed, and the analysis shows that our protocol can resist a variety of attacks. Our proposed protocol uses ECDigital Signature Algorithm (EC-DSA). It offers significantly improved performance, in terms of the required computational amount and energy usage, compared to many other authenticated protocols