Dynamic Public Key Certificates for IoT and WSN Scenarios

Abstract

In many Internet of Things (IoT) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) scenarios, the environments are hostile. Those resources-limited devices are usually dynamically deployed in these environments and are vulnerable to various attacks and threats. In these environments, secure public key encryptions and Diffie-Hellman key agreements could be very helpful mechanisms to cope the hostility. However, the connection to an on-line Certificate Authority (CA) is usually not available or unstable. In this study, based on Krawczyk-Rabin's chameleon hash and signature, we propose a novel certificate concept, called Dynamic Public Key Certificate (DPKC), that can support the subject (the owner) dynamically change the public/private key pairs without renewing the certificate. This DPKC facilitates devices perform public key encryptions with the dynamic public keys. Integrating DPKC with Chien's Modified Computational Diffie-Hellman (MCDHP) key agreement schemes, devices can achieve key agreement with higher efficiency and stronger security.