A lightweight certificate-based authentication scheme for 6LoWPAN-based internet of things

As the 6LoWPAN devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) applications communicate sensitive information over the unattended and insecure channel, it is essential to design suitable authentication methods for such devices. Due to high computation and communication overheads, the traditional certificate-based authentication schemes are predominantly considered impractical for resource-constraint 6LoWPAN devices used in IoT applications. However, a certificate with some lightweight features makes the authentication feasible in those resource-constraint 6LoWPAN devices. This paper proposes a lightweight certificate-based authentication scheme based on cryptographic hash operation and elliptic curve digital signature algorithm. It can mitigate several security threats, including replay, man-in-the-middle, impersonation, malicious device deployment, and spoofing attacks. The automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) verification tool is used to formally verify the security of the proposed scheme against several known attacks. In addition, the correctness of the authentication scheme is verified using the widely accepted BAN logic. Moreover, a comparative analysis among the proposed and other well-established relevant schemes is carried out in order to figure out the trade-off considering not only the functionality attributes and security but also the involved computation and communication costs.