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RFID is a system that uses the radio waves to scrutinize and capture data pertained to a tag for an object attached to it. In spite of RFID's wide application in industries, it poses a severe security issue. There is high susceptibility that RFID might be attacked with future attacks to invade the privacy and data in the system. To protect the RFID system against such attacks, the Pad-generation (Pad-Gen) function is used. This paper presents a mutual authentication scheme Tag Reader Mutual Authentication (TRMA) that is implemented using two approaches, the XOR operation and the MOD operation by modifying the Pad-Gen function. The proposed framework is executed on low-cost Artix7 FPGA XC7A100T-3CSG324, and its hardware verification is done on chip scope pro tool.

Internet of Drones (IoD), designed to coordinate the access of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is a specific application of the Internet of Things (IoT). Drones are used to control airspace and offer services such as rescue, traffic surveillance, environmental monitoring, delivery and so on. However, IoD continues to suffer from privacy and security issues. Firstly, messages are transmitted over public channels in IoD environments, which compromises data security. Further, sensitive data can also be extracted from stolen mobile devices of remote users. Moreover, drones are susceptible to physical capture and manipulation by adversaries, which are called drone capture attacks. Thus, the development of a secure and lightweight authentication scheme is essential to overcoming these security vulnerabilities, even on resource-constrained drones. In 2021, Akram et al. proposed a secure and lightweight user–drone authentication scheme for drone networks. However, we discovered that Akram et al.’s scheme is susceptible to user and drone impersonation, verification table leakage, and denial of service (DoS) attacks. Furthermore, their scheme cannot provide perfect forward secrecy. To overcome the aforementioned security vulnerabilities, we propose a secure mutual authentication and key agreement scheme between user and drone pairs. The proposed scheme utilizes physical unclonable function (PUF) to give drones uniqueness and resistance against drone stolen attacks. Moreover, the proposed scheme uses a fuzzy extractor to utilize the biometrics of users as secret parameters. We analyze the security of the proposed scheme using informal security analysis, Burrows–Abadi–Needham (BAN) logic, a Real-or-Random (RoR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. We also compared the security features and performance of the proposed scheme and the existing related schemes. Therefore, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme is suitable for IoD environments that can provide users with secure and convenient wireless communications.

The Internet of Things (IoT), which can be regarded as an enhanced version of machine-to-machine communication technology, was proposed to realize intelligent thing-to-thing communications by utilizing the Internet connectivity. In the IoT, “things” are generally heterogeneous and resource constrained. In addition, such things are connected to each other over low-power and lossy networks. In this paper, we propose an inter-device authentication and session-key distribution system for devices with only encryption modules. In the proposed system, unlike existing sensor-network environments where the key distribution center distributes the key, each sensor node is involved with the generation of session keys. In addition, in the proposed scheme, the performance is improved so that the authenticated device can calculate the session key in advance. The proposed mutual authentication and session-key distribution system can withstand replay attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks, and wiretapped secret-key attacks.

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are widely used to provide users with convenient services such as health-care, and smart home. To provide convenient services, sensor nodes in WSN environments collect and send the sensing data to the gateway. However, it can suffer from serious security issues because susceptible messages are exchanged through an insecure channel. Therefore, secure authentication protocols are necessary to prevent security flaws in WSN. In 2020, Moghadam et al. suggested an efficient authentication and key agreement scheme in WSN. Unfortunately, we discover that Moghadam et al.’s scheme cannot prevent insider and session-specific random number leakage attacks. We also prove that Moghadam et al.’s scheme does not ensure perfect forward secrecy. To prevent security vulnerabilities of Moghadam et al.’s scheme, we propose a secure and lightweight mutual authentication protocol for WSNs (WSN-SLAP). WSN-SLAP has the resistance from various security drawbacks, and provides perfect forward secrecy and mutual authentication. We prove the security of WSN-SLAP by using Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, Real-or-Random (ROR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. In addition, we evaluate the performance of WSN-SLAP compared with existing related protocols. We demonstrate that WSN-SLAP is more secure and suitable than previous protocols for WSN environments.

IoT is emerging as a massive web of heterogeneous networks estimated to interconnect over 41 billion devices by 2025, generating around 79 zettabytes of data. The heterogeneous network shall bring in a plethora of digital services leveraging cloud and communication technologies to drive smart city applications. As users access these services remotely in a ubiquitous environment over public channels, it becomes imperative to secure their communication. Both entity and message authentication emerge as a critical security primitive to thwart unauthorized access and prevent the falsification of messages. While researchers have given due attention to achieving mutual authentication between the subscriber (remote user) and gateway node (broker), the mutual authentication between the gateway node and an IoT sensor node is left to be desired. It could be done at the peril of a rogue or a shadow IoT device unauthorizedly joining an IoT-based network. Some of the widely used IoT-specific application layer protocols like constrained application protocol (COAP) and message queue telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol are not inherently equipped with adequate security safeguards. They, therefore, rely on underlying transport layer security protocols, which are highly computationally intensive. To address this issue, this paper proposes a three-factor authentication framework suitable for IoT-driven critical applications based upon identity, password and a digital signature scheme. The framework employs publish-subscribe pattern leveraging elliptical curve cryptography (ECC) and computationally low hash chains. The formal and informal security analysis shows that the framework is resistant to different types of cryptographic attacks. Furthermore, the automated validation performed with the Scyther tool verifies that there are no cryptographic attacks found on any of the claims stated in the proposed framework. Finally, a comparison of the framework security features, computational, and communication overheads is carried out with other existing protocols.

Authentication is considered one of the most critical technologies for the next generation of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) due to its ability to significantly improve the security of sensors. However, higher frequency cyber-attacks and more intrusion methods significantly increase the security risks of IoMT sensor devices, resulting in more and more patients’ privacy being threatened. Different from traditional IoT devices, sensors are generally considered to be based on low-cost hardware designs with limited storage resources; thus, authentication techniques for IoMT scenarios might not be applicable anymore. In this paper, we propose an efficient three-factor cluster-based user authentication protocol (3ECAP). Specifically, we establish the security association between the user and the sensor cluster through fine-grained access control based on Merkle, which perfectly achieves the segmentation of permission. We then demonstrate that 3ECAP can address the privilege escalation attack caused by permission segmentation. Moreover, we further analyze the security performance and communication cost using formal and non-formal security analysis, Proverif, and NS3. Simulation results demonstrated the robustness of 3ECAP against various cyber-attacks and its applicability in an IoMT environment with limited storage resources.

Secure authentication in the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) must ensure strong security while maintaining minimal computational overhead, especially for resource-constrained medical devices. This study introduces SELAM, a lightweight multifactor authentication framework optimized for critical IoMT applications. Unlike traditional designs, SELAM selectively confines elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) to user/device registration, while relying on lightweight primitives (XOR, hashing/HMAC, and timestamp-freshness checks) in online operation to minimize runtime cost. The scheme is validated using the CICIoMT-2024 dataset through Python-based cryptographic simulation and ns-3 network emulation. Under standardized 16-byte online field accounting, SELAM reduces payload-only online communication to 6,144 bits/device versus 7,680 bits/device for a Heavy+Verify ECC baseline; in ns-3 header-inclusive accounting, this corresponds to 39,416 versus 45,703 bits/device at . At 1 Mb/s, SELAM achieves 6.24 ms total per-device authentication overhead (communication + computation) compared to 31.27 ms for Heavy+Verify, while reducing online computation from 23.59 ms to 0.10 ms per device. Across cohort sizes – over 20 seeds (mean ± 95% CI), SELAM maintains attack-regime authentication success ratio (ASR) at 0.88–0.90 (baseline: 0.90–0.92), with protocol-level FAR=0 (no accepted replay/impersonation) and benign FRR=0 observed in PhaseLogs. Security analysis using BAN logic confirms mutual authentication and key confirmation on a fresh session key in Phases 4–5, with replay/impersonation resistance under the stated Dolev–Yao adversary and standard MAC/AEAD assumptions. The results indicate that confining ECC to registration preserves strong authentication while removing public-key operations from the performance-critical online path.

Recently, Tewari and Gupta proposed a ultra-lightweight mutual authentication protocol in IoT environments for RFID tags. Their protocol aims to provide secure communication with least cost in both storage and computation. Unfortunately, in this paper, we exploit the vulnerability of this protocol. In this attack, an attacker can obtain the key shared between a back-end database server and a tag. We also explore the possibility in patching the system with some modifications.

Smart grid (SG) provides a suitable adjustment in the amount of power generation by providing the ability to supervise consumer behavior. SG uses in the smart system to encourage cultural heritage because it is accountable for providing power without any interruption. SG is one of the vital components to authorize smart systems with a lot of smart features to attract visitors to come and visit heritage. In SG, environment security and privacy are the major concern for communications. An authentication protocol provides secure communication between users and service provider for security and privacy purpose. Several authentication protocols are available in the literature. However, they are enabled to known security attacks easily or they are not computationally efficient for SG communication. In the present paper, we design an ECC-based mutual authentication protocol for smart grid communication using biometric approach. The present framework satisfy various security features such as replay attack, user anonymity, man in the middle attack, key freshness, message authentication, session key agreement, impersonation attack, non-traceability and non-transferability. Further, the proposed protocol takes much less communication and computation costs compared with other existing protocols in SG environment. Therefore, our scheme is convenient for practical application in SG communication.

The Internet of Drones (IoD) brings an unprecedented prospect for massive aerial data acquisition; on the other hand, it meets severe hindrances in how to accomplish robust, secure, and economic identity authentication with the limited resources available. In this paper, ChebIoD (Chebyshev polynomial-based mutual authentication and session key generation) is proposed as a new mutual authentication and session key agreement protocol for IoD environments. ChebIoD differs from the existing methods of blockchain, PUF, and ECC in that it consolidates three elaborate mechanisms: (a) post-quantum-oriented design methodology; (b) a dynamic solution for key update/revocation scheme; and (c) formal verification using BAN logic, Real-Or-Random (ROR) model, and AVISPA. The principal difference is that we are able to assign a precise definition of security for key privacy; namely, the protocol achieves both forward and backward secrecy along with performance gains for lightweight polynomial computations without requiring exponential hard assumptions. An Enhanced Security Assessment covers side-channel threats as well as the robustness of the Trusted Authority. We also show an updated performance comparison to the IoD-specific AKE protocols and state-of-the-art schemes in recent works on Blockchain-, Physical Unclonable Function (PUF)-, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)-, and Chebyshev-based approaches. In identical simulation settings, ChebIoD decreases computation time by up to 63.5%, reduces communication overhead by up to 62.4%, and lowers energy consumption by up to 66.7%, compared to state-of-the-art solutions. These improvements are consistent across multiple baselines, though the exact gains vary depending on the compared protocol. The practical utility is showcased by actual IoD projects for disaster response, precision agriculture, and urban air mobility solutions. Overall, ChebIoD demonstrates efficient and scalable authentication for IoD under simulation.