Anonymous authentication for privacy-preserving IoT target-driven applications Articles uri icon

publication date

  • September 2013

start page

  • 111

end page

  • 123

volume

  • 37

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0167-4048

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1872-6208

abstract

  • The Internet of Things (IoT) will be formed by smart objects and services interacting autonomously and in real-time. As an application scenario, household smart meters will provide real-time neighborhood information which enables a smart community to cooperatively identify patterns, adapt consumption and improve overall quality of life, making the shared environment more sustainable. There is, in these types of settings, a major need toward securing all communications, placing equal effort on guaranteeing privacy properties (e.g., participant anonymity, unlinkability) as on assuring security properties (e.g., content authenticity). In this article, we present a fully decentralized anonymous authentication protocol aimed at encouraging the implementation of privacy-preserving IoT target-driven applications. The system is set up by an ad-hoc community of decentralized founding nodes. From then on, nodes can interact, being participants of cyber-physical systems, preserving full anonymity. We also present a performance and security analysis of the proposed system. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

keywords

  • anonymous credential system; fully decentralized protocol; threshold cryptography; zero-knowledge proof of knowledge; smart community