Secure MQTT for Internet of Things (IoT)

Rapid innovations in the area of digital things and Information Communication Technology are driving rapid deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) around the globe. Device to Device communications (D2D) in IoT are envisaged through various protocols such as Constrained Access Protocol (CoAP), Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and MQTT-SN (for sensor networks). One of the major concerns in the deployment of IoT is to ensure the security of devices and D2D communications. Besides, existing communication protocols for IoT are devoid of security features. To address this, we propose a secure version of MQTT and MQTT-SN protocols (SMQTT and SMQTT-SN) in which security feature is augmented to the existing MQTT protocol based on Key/Ciphertext Policy-Attribute Based Encryption (KP/CP-ABE) using lightweight Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Further we demonstrate feasibility of SMQTT and SMQTT-SN protocols for various IoT requirements through simulations and evaluate their performance.