Abstract
The network-enabled smart objects are evolving everywhere in the modern era to solve numerous problems like real-world data collection from the environment, communication, analysis, and security. However, these objects (Internet-of-Things), in combination with low latency networks, are still not qualified for complex tasks and do not deliver efficient services due to the restriction of access and lack of secure authentication protocol. Because the data is collected by the embedded sensors inside the smart object in a real-time manner from the environment and communicated to the destination Centre (server) for intelligent decisions, are vulnerable to numerous threats, attention is required for the security and needs to be secure, as it transmits via an open network channel. This security issue can only be handled by designing a flawless, lightweight, and robust mutual authentication scheme. To do so, we have proposed a mutual authentication scheme using a simple hash cryptographic function, Elliptic Curve Cryptographic (ECC) technique, and XOR operations. The proposed scheme is lightweight, efficient, and effective in performance while offering secure transmission sessions among all the participants. The security of the proposed mechanism has been formally tested using GNY (Gong-Needham-Yahalon) logic, ProVerif2.03, and informally using propositions and realistic discussions. By comparing it with many of the existing authentication protocols, it has been demonstrated that our scheme is lightweight in terms of computation and communication metrics.