A novel protocol for efficient authentication in cloud-based IoT devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as one of the most revolutionary technological innovations with the proliferation of applications within almost all fields of the human race. A cloud environment is the main component of IoT infrastructure to make IoT devices efficient, safe, reliable, usable, and autonomous. Reduction in infrastructure cost and demand accessibility of shared resources are essential parts of cloud-based IoT (CIoT) infrastructure. Information leakage in cloud-assisted IoT devices may invite dangerous activities and phenomena. Various cloud-based systems store IoT sensor data and later on access it accordingly. Some of them are public, and some of them are private. Private cloud services must be secured from external as well as internal adversaries. Hence, there must be a robust mechanism to prevent unauthorized access to devices. This paper proposes a novel and efficient protocol based on the Elliptic Curve property known as Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP) with hash and XOR functions for the authentication in cloud-based IoT devices. In comparison to the existing protocols, the proposed protocol is resistant to attacks and other security vulnerabilities. The one-way hash function and XOR function effectively ensure a reduction in computation cost. AVISPA and BAN logic have been used for formal analysis of the proposed protocol. As per the performance analysis results, it is clear that the proposed protocol is efficiently suitable for cloud-assisted IoT devices.