Design and Implementation of an Inter-Device Authentication Framework Guaranteeing Explicit Ownership

Abstract

Future networks everywhere will be connected to innumerable Internet-ready home appliances. A device accepting connections over a network must be able to verify the identity of a connecting device in order to prevent device spoofing and other malicious actions. In this paper, we propose a security mechanism for an inter-device communication. We state the importance of a distingushing and binding mechanism between a device's identity and its ownership information to realize practical inter-device authentication. In many conventional authentication systems, the relationship between the device's identity and the ownership information is not considered. Therefore, we propose a novel inter-device authentication framework guaranteeing this relationship. Our prototype implementation employs a smart card to maintain the device's identity, the ownership information and the access control rules securely. Our framework efficiently achieves secure inter-device authentication based on the device's identity, and authorization based on the ownership information related to the device. We also show how to apply our smart card system for inter-device authentication to the existing standard security protocols.