[Paper Review] Hash-MAC-DSDV: Mutual Authentication for Intelligent IoT-Based Cyber-Physical Systems

Muhammad Adil, Mian Ahmad Jan+5 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|May 17, 2021

Advanced Authentication Protocols Security4 citations

TL;DR

This paper proposes Hash-MAC-DSDV, a lightweight, decentralized mutual authentication scheme for IoT-based Cyber-Physical Systems using DSDV routing with MAC address hashing and blockchain-like local/public chains. It enables secure, energy-efficient device-to-device authentication by registering MAC addresses in hierarchical chains and using one-way hash verification, reducing energy use by 11% and achieving only 7% packet loss ratio under peak load.

ABSTRACT

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) connected in the form of Internet of Things (IoT) are vulnerable to various security threats, due to the infrastructure-less deployment of IoT devices. Device-to-Device (D2D) authentication of these networks ensures the integrity, authenticity, and confidentiality of information in the deployed area. The literature suggests different approaches to address security issues in CPS technologies. However, they are mostly based on centralized techniques or specific system deployments with higher cost of computation and communication. It is therefore necessary to develop an effective scheme that can resolve the security problems in CPS technologies of IoT devices. In this paper, a lightweight Hash-MAC-DSDV (Hash Media Access Control Destination Sequence Distance Vector) routing scheme is proposed to resolve authentication issues in CPS technologies, connected in the form of IoT networks. For this purpose, a CPS of IoT devices (multi-WSNs) is developed from the local-chain and public chain, respectively. The proposed scheme ensures D2D authentication by the Hash-MAC-DSDV mutual scheme, where the MAC addresses of individual devices are registered in the first phase and advertised in the network in the second phase. The proposed scheme allows legitimate devices to modify their routing table and unicast the one-way hash authentication mechanism to transfer their captured data from source towards the destination. Our evaluation results demonstrate that Hash- MAC-DSDV outweighs the existing schemes in terms of attack detection, energy consumption and communication metrics.

Motivation & Objective

• Address the vulnerability of IoT-based Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) to security threats due to infrastructure-less deployment and reliance on centralized authentication.
• Overcome limitations of centralized D2D authentication, such as single point of failure and high communication overhead.
• Design a decentralized, lightweight mutual authentication mechanism suitable for multi-WSN environments in IoT-CPS.
• Reduce energy consumption and improve network reliability in dynamic, distributed IoT networks through optimized routing and authentication.
• Ensure secure, consistent, and efficient device communication using a hybrid local and public chain architecture with hash-based verification.

Proposed method

• Propose a modified DSDV routing protocol enhanced with mutual authentication using one-way hash functions.
• Implement a two-tier chain architecture: local chains at cluster heads and a public chain at the base station for MAC address registration.
• Register legitimate device MAC addresses with cluster heads (local chain) and propagate them to the base station (public chain) for global verification.
• Apply the MD5 hash algorithm to MAC addresses for secure advertisement in the public chain to prevent spoofing.
• Use unicast communication with one-way hash authentication to verify device legitimacy during data transmission.
• Update routing tables based on authenticated local and public chain information to ensure secure and efficient data forwarding.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can mutual authentication be achieved in decentralized IoT-CPS networks without relying on centralized servers?
• RQ2 To what extent does the proposed Hash-MAC-DSDV scheme reduce energy consumption compared to standard DSDV in multi-WSN environments?
• RQ3 How does the scheme perform in terms of packet loss ratio and latency under high network load and malicious activity?
• RQ4 Can the integration of local and public chains improve the scalability and reliability of device authentication in distributed IoT-CPS?
• RQ5 What is the impact of hash-based MAC verification on attack detection and communication overhead in real-time wireless networks?

Key findings

• The Hash-MAC-DSDV scheme reduces energy consumption by 11% compared to the standard DSDV protocol during simulation-based network operation.
• The scheme achieves a low packet loss ratio of only 7% even under peak network traffic and malicious traffic conditions.
• Latency remains consistent during message exchange, even with the presence of malicious devices, due to the unique communication pattern of legitimate nodes.
• The attack detection rate is significantly improved due to the use of authenticated MAC addresses and one-way hash verification.
• The communication cost is reduced through unicast transmission and efficient routing table updates based on authenticated chain data.
• The scheme outperforms existing centralized and distributed authentication methods in terms of security, energy efficiency, and reliability metrics.