An Efficient and Scalable Mutual Symmetric Key Establishment and Management for IoT Devices

Recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted the attention of many researchers due to its popularity in various applications. Connecting different capability devices in the Internet of Things architecture makes security a big challenge. Datagram Transport Layer Security Protocol is considered a standard for securing communication among Internet of Things devices by establishing a secret key. However, the default method, X.509, requires certificates and public key infrastructure that are more resource-consuming and not suitable for resource-constrained devices. On the other hand, datagram transport layer security supports the pre-shared key approach and raw pubic keys, which are lightweight but not scalable for such large networks. Hence, a scalable and lightweight mutual key establishment and management protocol is proposed for such a large number of resource-constrained IoT devices. The implementation of the proposed scheme in Contiki OS and on a real IoT platform shows its performance evaluation in terms of feasibility and scalability.