Insecurity of an 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. Recently, Alcaide et al. proposed a fully decentralized anonymous authentication protocol for privacy-preserving IoT target-driven applications. Their system is set up by an ad-hoc community of decentralized founding nodes. Nodes can interact, being participants of cyberphysical systems, preserving full anonymity. In this study, we point out that their protocol is insecure. The adversary can cheat the data collectors by impersonating a legitimate user. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.