Energy-Efficient Elliptic Curve Cryptography-Based DTLS Key Establishment Protocol for IoT Communication

Abstract

Security is the most important aspect in the Internet of Things (IoT) network. Datagram transport layer security (DTLS) protocol helps in achieving secure communication in IoT network. To run the DTLS protocol, key establishment should take place between communicating devices. Key establishment can be done by using either symmetric keys or asymmetric keys. Using symmetric key (preshared key) mode perfect secrecy and security cannot be achieved. If symmetric key is compromised, then there may be a chance of decrypting the messages of the previous sessions by the attacker. In order to overcome above-mentioned drawbacks and to increase the level of security an efficient elliptic curve cryptography (ECC)-based DTLS key establishment protocol for IoT communication is proposed. In the proposed method, ECC plays a major role in providing security. The proposed key establishment protocol is implemented in MATLAB, and the performance of proposed protocol with traditional key establishment protocol in terms of different simulation parameters is compared.