An Anonymous Authentication and Key Update Mechanism for IoT Devices Based on EnOcean Protocol.

Abstract

EnOcean, a commonly used control protocol in smart lighting systems, provides authentication, as well as message integrity verification services, and can resist replay attack and tamper attack. However, since the device identity information transmitted between sensors in smart lighting control systems is easily accessible by malicious attackers, attackers can analyze users’ habits based on the intercepted information. This paper analyzed the security of the EnOcean protocol using a formal analysis method based on the colored Petri net (CPN) theory and the Dolev–Yao attacker model and found that the protocol did not anonymize the device identity information and did not have a communication key update mechanism, so an attacker could easily initiate a key compromise impersonation attack (KCIA) after breaking the pre-shared communication key. To address the above security issues, this paper proposed an EnOcean-A protocol with higher security based on the EnOcean protocol. The EnOcean-A protocol introduced a trusted third-party server to send communication keys to communication devices because devices must obtain different communication keys from the trusted third-party server each time they communicated. Thus, this protocol could resist a KCIA and achieve forward security. Meanwhile, the device identity information was anonymized using a homomorphic hash function in the EnOcean-A protocol, and the dynamic update mechanism of the device identity information was added so that an attacker could not obtain the real identity information of the device. Finally, the formal analysis of the EnOcean-A protocol showed that the new protocol could resist a KCIA and ensure the anonymity and untraceability of the communication device, which had higher security compared with the EnOcean protocol.