A Secure and Lightweight Group Mobility Authentication Scheme for 6LoWPAN Networks

The integration of Internet Protocol version 6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPANs) provided IP technologies within wireless sensor networks that dramatically increased the Internet of Things (IoT). Therefore, to facilitate efficient mobility management for resource-constrained IP-based sensor nodes, the Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) standard has been introduced to reduce communication overhead. However, the standard has addressed security and mobility authentication challenges in 6LoWPANs, although recent solutions have yet to focus much on facilitating secure group handovers. Considering these issues, a Secure and Lightweight Group Mobility Authentication Scheme (SL_GAS) is proposed for 6LoWPAN’s highly constrained sensor nodes. SL_GAS innovatively utilizes one-time alias identities, temporary IDs, tickets, and an aggregated MAC with tags to ensure mutual authentication while maintaining sensor anonymity, providing a balanced security and privacy approach. SL_GAS’s robustness against a variety of security threats is validated through formal automated verification using the Scyther tool alongside SVO logic, while an informal analysis demonstrates its resilience to known attacks. Comparative analysis with existing schemes highlights SL_GAS’s advantages in reducing signal cost, transmission delay, communication, and computation overhead. SL_GAS stands out for its combination of security, privacy, and efficiency, making it a promising approach for enhancing IoT connectivity in resource-constrained settings.