NIABIAuth: A Non-Interactive Attribute Binding Identity Authentication Protocol for Internet of Things Terminals

The large-scale deployment of distributed devices in the Internet of Things (IoT) brings urgent demands for secure, scalable, and lightweight identity authentication. For example, virtual power plants integrate numerous heterogeneous energy terminals to support grid dispatch and market operations, while posing challenges such as real-time access, resource constraints, and identity privacy protection. To address these challenges, this paper proposes NIABIAuth, a non-interactive attribute binding identity authentication protocol for IoT terminals. NIABIAuth supports dynamic challenge computation and binds cryptographic identity proofs with terminal attributes, enabling fine-grained and privacy preserving access control. By storing identity credentials and verification records on the chain, this protocol ensures traceability and tamper resistance. Experiments demonstrate that NIABIAuth maintains low authentication latency and is consistent throughput, even under constrained conditions. Compared with baseline methods, NIABIAuth achieves substantial reductions in communication and computation cost. The proposed NIABIAuth was formally verified using the AVISPA tool, which proved that it could resist common attacks, including replay attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, etc. A large number of simulation experiments have demonstrated that the proposed protocol can provide real-time identity authentication for Internet of Things terminals.