Security and key management in IoT‐based wireless sensor networks: An authentication protocol using symmetric key

TLDR

Wireless sensor networks, foundational to IoT and smart computing, are resource‑limited and require robust authentication, yet existing protocols—including Gope et al.’s—have been shown to be vulnerable to attacks. The authors present an enhanced symmetric‑key authentication protocol for IoT‑based WSNs, which they validate through Proverif analysis and BAN logic verification. This protocol eliminates user traceability, stolen‑verifier, and DoS vulnerabilities, matches baseline communication cost, and achieves a 52.63 % reduction in computation cost compared to the baseline.

Abstract

Summary Wireless sensor networks (WSN) consist of hundreds of miniature sensor nodes to sense various events in the surrounding environment and report back to the base station. Sensor networks are at the base of internet of things (IoT) and smart computing applications where a function is performed as a result of sensed event or information. However, in resource‐limited WSN authenticating a remote user is a vital security concern. Recently, researchers put forth various authentication protocols to address different security issues. Gope et al presented a protocol claiming resistance against known attacks. A thorough analysis of their protocol shows that it is vulnerable to user traceability, stolen verifier, and denial of service (DoS) attacks. In this article, an enhanced symmetric key‐based authentication protocol for IoT‐based WSN has been presented. The proposed protocol has the ability to counter user traceability, stolen verifier, and DoS attacks. Furthermore, the proposed protocol has been simulated and verified using Proverif and BAN logic. The proposed protocol has the same communication cost as the baseline protocol; however, in computation cost, it has 52.63% efficiency as compared with the baseline protocol.