Node-to-Node Secure Data Transmission Protocol for Low-power IoT Devices

Through the internet and local networks, IoT devices exchange data. Most of the loT devices are low-power devices, meaning that they are designed to use less electric power. To secure data transmission, it is required to encrypt the messages. Encryption and decryption of messages are computationally expensive activities, thus require considerable amount of processing and memory power which is not affordable to low-power IoT devices. Therefore, not all secure transmission protocols are low-power IoT devices friendly. This study proposes a secure data transmission protocol for low-power IoT devices. The design inherits some features in Kerberos and one time password concepts. The protocol is designed for devices which are connected to each other, as in a fully connected network topology. The protocol uses symmetric key cryptography under the assumption of that the device specific keys are never being transmitted over the network. It resists DoS, message replay and Man-of-the-middle attacks while facilitating the key security concepts such as Authenticity, Confidentiality and Integrity. The designed protocol uses less number of encryption/ decryption cycles and maintain session based strong authentication to facilitate secure data transmission among nodes.