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

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks 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 IoT and smart computing applications where a function is performed as a result of sensed event or information. However, in resource-limited Wireless Sensor Network 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 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 to the baseline protocol.