Towards Continuous Authentication in Internet of Things Based on Secret Sharing Scheme

In this paper, we propose a novel continuous authentication protocol for the Internet of Things based on secret sharing scheme. This protocol provides secure and efficient authentication for frequent message transmissions in short session time intervals. The protocol introduces a novel use of secret sharing scheme, that is, the secret is used as an authenticator and the shares are used as authenticator tokens. Each token is an outcome of a function of time that binds the secret share to a specific point in time during the session such that the share can only be revealed in that specific time. The share can be linked back to the secret and, hence, the message source can be authenticated. Security evaluation of the protocol shows that it fulfills the stated security requirements and addresses the listed attacks. Performance evaluation of the protocol shows that it is lightweight in terms of computation and communication costs, thus addressing the resource-constrained IoT endpoints.