LightPUF-IIoT: A Lightweight PUF-Based Authentication Scheme With Real-Time Detection of Rogue Devices in Fog-Assisted IIoT Data Sharing

Abstract

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) generates a vast volume of sensitive data that demands not only confidentiality but also authenticity and integrity—especially in large-scale deployments. Ensuring that data originates from trusted devices is critical; however, existing authentication mechanisms often lack scalability and effective revocation support. To address these challenges, we propose LightPUF-IIoT, a secure and lightweight authentication scheme designed for fog-assisted IIoT data sharing. The scheme leverages Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge Proofs (NIZKPs) to enable scalable, group-based authentication for devices and fog nodes. By binding authenticated identities to cryptographic tokens used during data transmission, LightPUF-IIoT ensures data authenticity and supports real-time rogue device detection. The scheme also includes efficient mechanisms for device revocation and secure token regeneration. Experimental results show that LightPUF-IIoT provides strong security guarantees with minimal resource overhead and significantly outperforms existing approaches in terms of computational cost, scalability, and authentication throughput.