An Improved Authentication & Key Exchange Protocol Based on ECDH for WSNs

TL;DR

This paper critiques an existing ECDH-based protocol for wireless sensor networks, identifies its security flaws, and proposes an improved version with enhanced security features and informal proof of robustness.

Contribution

It introduces a modified ECDH-based authentication and key exchange protocol for WSNs, addressing previous vulnerabilities and providing an informal security analysis.

Findings

Original protocol has security flaws and vulnerabilities.

The proposed protocol resists identified attacks.

Security is supported by informal analysis.

Abstract

The widespread use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that are consisted of resource-constrained sensor nodes in communication with gateways in open-space environments and industries has highlighted the need for a secure yet fast communication protocol between users, gateways, and sensor nodes. Due to the properties of the network, elliptic-curve cryptography seems to be the most viable choice as it requires fewer resources than most other options. In this paper, we analyze the protocol suggested by Moghadam et al. which is based on ECDH (elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman), and mention some of the flaws in their proposed authentication and key exchange protocol. Some attacks are also mentioned to further explain the shortcomings of their schema. Then a modified version of the protocol is proposed, analyzed, and checked against the same attacks as an informal security proof.