Lightweight IoT Group Key Establishment Scheme Using One-way Accumulator

Abstract

Group communication in the context of Internet of Things (IoT) is an efficient and fast way of broadcasting group messages. A message needs to be sent securely to maintain confidentiality of data and privacy of users. The main challenges in sharing group keys consist in designing and implementing a group key establishment scheme that is feasible for devices with limited computational capabilities. Existing group establishment schemes do not offer a good solution for resource-constrained IoT devices, a solution that provides secure group key management procedures when new nodes join or leave the group without compromising the security of the system. In this paper, we propose a lightweight and computationally secure group key establishment scheme suitable for resource constrained IoT networks. The proposed scheme is based on elliptic curve cryptography and cryptographic one-way accumulators. We show how to combine the aforementioned concepts to design a group key establishment scheme that guarantees both forward and backward secrecy. Finally, we show how the established group key is updated when the group size dynamically changes and how the proposed solution can be used with block and stream ciphers.