Secure user authentication and key agreement scheme for IoT device access control based smart home communications

Abstract

The upcoming paradigm in Internet of Things (IoT) based applications is to afford effective interactional communication strategies between the devices in the smart home system. With the rapid growth of IoT services, the incorporation of security measures becomes a vital concern. The general issue faced in the security of the intercommunication between the devices and the users is improper authentication between them. Also, the access control of devices must be ensured with reliable features for establishing secure communication between the users and devices. Hence, we propose a protocol called Modified Honey Encryption using Inverse Sampling-Conditional Probability Model Transform (MHE-IS-CPMT) with Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) to authenticate and perform the key agreement. Here, we employ the following steps: (1) Initialization, (2) Registration, (3) Login and data access Request, (4) Authentication and Session key agreement, and (5) Key update. At the commencement of the session, the users (u), Mobile Users (MU), and the other devices participating in the smart home system are initialized to the Home network head (H). Then, for the registration process, the user and the devices register them into H via the smart gateway (SG) by providing their own identities. The user details and the data about the devices are secured using the MHE-IS-CPMT with the ECC method. Next, during the login process, the registered users connect to the smart home system and send a request to SG to gain access to the devices. After verification, the user is authenticated and the system enables them to acquire the device access control by providing them with the private key of the device. In addition, the proposed system facilitates the secure key change procedure for the legitimate user to update their key whenever required. Hence, the performance of the model is secured against different types of attacks and also obtains more security features than existing methods.