An efficient certificateless key exchange protocol for heterogeneous networks in human‐centered IoT systems

Abstract

SummaryHuman‐centered Internet of things (IoT) systems enable human beings to enjoy the ubiquitous services and play more and more important roles in our life. A common application scenario in human‐centered IoT systems is that two distributed wireless devices from heterogeneous networks want to communicate with each other. However, key generation centers (KGCs) from different networks usually use independent security parameters. It is difficult for two users with different security parameters to establish a common session key. We propose a certificateless key exchange protocol for two different devices managed by different KGCs to address the issue. The security of the proposed protocol is conducted in the random oracle model with the hardness assumption of elliptic curve computational Diffie‐Hellman (ECDH) problem. The main merits of our protocol include the following: (a) it enables users from heterogeneous networks to establish upon a shared session key, (b) it can solve the key escrow problem, (c) it does not use bilinear pairings and obtains computational efficiency, and (d) it achieves stronger security compared with other related protocols.