HCALA: Hyperelliptic curve-based anonymous lightweight authentication scheme for Internet of Drones

Abstract

A drone is often called an ”Unmanned Aerial Vehicle” or UAV. It is utilized in various civilian and military applications, including agriculture, surveillance, and delivery of packages. A promising idea for enhancing the safety and quality of drone flight is to build the Internet of Drones (IoD), in which drones are used to collect sensitive data, which is then communicated in real-time to external user (Ui) through the Ground Station Server (GSS). Before deployment, the GSS and all drones are registered with Control Room (CR), a central authority, which is a trusted authority. To ensure secure and reliable communications, an efficient and secure authentication scheme is needed to enable users and drones to authenticate each other and share a session key. Furthermore, because drones generally have small batteries and limited memory capacity, efficient and lightweight security techniques are suitable for them. Many schemes to secure IoD environments have been proposed recently; however, some were proven as insecure, and some degraded efficiency. In this work, we focus on developing a novel blockchain-based authentication scheme, called HCALA, on protecting the communication between an external user and drone utilizing Hyperelliptic Curve Cryptography (HECC). To evaluate the viability and efficacy of HCALA, We employ the extensively used Random Oracle Model (ROM) and formal security verification using a software tool called AVISPA, which is used to validate the internet security protocols. HCALA is also examined by utilizing informal security analysis techniques, demonstrating that the proposed protocol can withstand several well-known active and passive adversary attacks. It also shows that HCALA is more efficient regarding different parameters, according to the performance comparison. Compared to previous similar schemes, the security and functionality aspects are improved, and the computation, communication costs, and energy consumption are reduced.