Symmetric Key Based Scheme for Verification Token Generation in Internet of Things Communication Environment

Abstract

AbstractThe traditional power grid systems are being replaced with smart grids so as to offer the required levels of flexibility, reliability, efficiency and dynamic power adjustments. However, security and privacy challenges are serious issues in smart grid environment due to a myriad of heterogeneous appliances that interconnect with the grid system. Consequently, many security and privacy preservation schemes have been developed based on techniques such as elliptic curve cryptography, blockchains, homomorphic encryption, public key certificates and bilinear pairing operations among others. However, these schemes have numerous performance and security constraints. In addition, some of these protocols require tamper proof devices which ride on unrealistic security assumptions. In this paper, a symmetric key based scheme for verification token generation is developed for internet of things communication environment. Extensive performance evaluation is executed in terms of computation, communication and space complexities. The results show that the proposed scheme has relatively low storage complexity, and the least computation and communication complexities. This renders it applicable in smart grid communication environment. In terms of security and privacy, a number of hypotheses are formulated and proofed to show that this scheme is secure under both the Dolev-Yao (DY) and the Canetti-Krawczyk threat models.KeywordsAuthenticationIoTKey agreementPseudonymityTime-stamping