HashXor: A lightweight scheme for identity privacy of IoT devices in 5G mobile network

摘要

Mobile networks are set to play a crucial role as backbone network in IoT deployments due to their low cost, broad coverage, high bandwidth, and low latency. However, a challenging security issue prevalent in mobile networks across the various generations including 4G, is identity privacy. In a recent standard for 5G mobile network: 3GPP TS 33.501, an Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption Scheme (ECIES) is adopted to tackle this issue. While this mechanism seems to provide a reasonable solution for modern smart phones, it may not be best suitable for resource constrained IoT devices because of the computationally intensive calculations involved in elliptic curve cryptography. In this paper, an alternative lightweight scheme for identity privacy of IoT devices in 5G mobile network is proposed. This new scheme called 'HashXor' requires only two Hash operations and three Xor operations for the IoT device to achieve its objective. The scheme is found safe and logically correct through security analysis and formal analysis (using AVISPA tool). Through an execution time analysis in the ATmega328P microchip, the scheme is found to be computationally efficient compared to ECIES and few other recent proposals in this area.