Anonymous authentication for privacy-preserving IoT target-driven applications

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.