Unforgeable Digital Signature Integrated into Lightweight Encryption Based on Effective ECDH for Cybersecurity Mechanism in Internet of Things

Cybersecurity protocols enable several levels of protection against cyberattacks (digital attacks) that spread across network devices, platform programs, and network applications. On the Internet of Things (IoT), cyberattacks are generally intended to access and change/destroy sensitive information, which may reduce IoT benefits. Moreover, recent IoT systems are experiencing a critical challenge in designing a lightweight and robust cybersecurity mechanism on resource-constrained IoT devices. The cybersecurity challenges facing the IoT that should be taken into consideration are identifying compromised devices, data/service protection, and identifying impacted IoT users. This paper proposes an unforgeable digital signature integrated into an effective lightweight encryption (ELCD) mechanism that utilizes the secure key distribution in an elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) and resolves the weak bit problem in the shared secret key due to the Diffie-Hellman exchange. The ELCD mechanism proposes a secure combination between the digital signature and encryption, and it uses fast hash functions to confidentially transfer a shared secret key among IoT devices over an insecure communication channel. Furthermore, the ELCD mechanism checks the true identity of the sender with certainty through the proposed digital signature, which works based on a hash function and three steps of curve-point inspection. Furthermore, the security of ELCD was mathematically proven using the random oracle and IoT adversary models. The findings of the emulation results show the effectiveness of ELCD in terms of CPU execution time, storage cost, and power consumption that are less by 53.8%, 33-17%, and 68.7%, respectively, compared to the baseline cryptographic algorithms.

Automated summary

Cybersecurity protocols provide protection against cyberattacks that target network devices, platform programs, and network applications. In the context of IoT, cybersecurity challenges such as compromised devices, data/service protection, and identifying impacted users need to be addressed. This paper proposes a lightweight encryption mechanism that integrates an unforgeable digital signature, which utilizes secure key distribution and resolves weaknesses in shared secret keys. The mechanism combines digital signature and encryption, and utilizes fast hash functions for secure key exchange in IoT devices.