Mutual Continuous Lightweight Authentication Based on Node Prioritization Using Traffic Rates for Internet of Things

Today, billions of devices are connected via the Internet of Things, often through insecure communications. Therefore, security and privacy issues of these devices are a major concern. Since devices in IoT are typically resource-constrained devices, the security solutions of this environment in terms of processing and memory must be secure and lightweight. However, many existing security solutions are not particularly suitable for IoT due to high computation. So there is a need for a lightweight authentication protocol for IoT devices. In this paper, a mutual lightweight authentication protocol between nodes with limited resources and IoT servers is introduced that uses node prioritization based on traffic rates. This scheme is light due to the use of lightweight XOR and Hash operations. The proposed is resistant to cyber-attacks such as eavesdropping attack, and replay attack. The proposed is also secure using the AVISPA tool in the Dolev-Yao threat model. The security risks of this scheme are low compared to other lightweight methods. In addition, the proposal is compared with existing authentication schemes reduces the computational cost, protects privacy through anonymity of nodes, and provides forward secrecy. In our method, the execute time of authentication is reduced by 15% compared to the other methods.