Optimized ECC Implementation for Secure Communication between Heterogeneous IoT Devices

Sensors (Basel). 2015 Aug 28;15(9):21478-99. doi: 10.3390/s150921478.

Abstract

The Internet of Things is integrating information systems, places, users and billions of constrained devices into one global network. This network requires secure and private means of communications. The building blocks of the Internet of Things are devices manufactured by various producers and are designed to fulfil different needs. There would be no common hardware platform that could be applied in every scenario. In such a heterogeneous environment, there is a strong need for the optimization of interoperable security. We present optimized elliptic curve Cryptography algorithms that address the security issues in the heterogeneous IoT networks. We have combined cryptographic algorithms for the NXP/Jennic 5148- and MSP430-based IoT devices and used them to created novel key negotiation protocol.

Keywords: Edwards curves; IPv6; Internet of Things; MSP430; NXP/Jennic 5148; cross-vendor; elliptic curve cryptography; heterogeneous devices; interoperability; large-scale pilots; security.