Efficient Key Generation Techniques for Securing IoT Communication Protocols

摘要

Internet of things (IoT) is getting bigger as communication infrastructure and device capabilities are getting improved day-by-day, creating a huge market for IoT devices for commercial as well as personal usage. This paper sheds light on the compromises done by vendors on the grounds of security, resources and flexibility to lure customers with low prices, smaller and fancier designs of IoT device and its consequences. Most of the IoT devices are resource-constrained and hence standardization bodies such as IEEE and IETF gave many protocols for IoT devices which are defined over IoT protocol stack. The degree of security in each layer of IoT protocol stack is discussed and it is found that NFC protocol which operates on physical-data link layer and 6LoWPAN, a network layer protocol, lack proper key management while encrypting the data. A most important part of key management in cryptographic algorithms is key generation and storage (if needed). Different types and methods of key generation techniques are also discussed which might give a solution over a variety of situations combining the level of security requirement and resources available in strengthening the abovementioned communication protocols.