A Lightweight Lattice-Based Post-Quantum Authentication and Key-Establishment Framework for Resource-Constrained Internet of Things Networks

Abstract

In an Internet of Things (IoT) network, the growing maturity of quantum computing poses many challenges for traditional public-key cryptographic algorithms for authentication and secure communication. For resource-limited IoT devices, security mechanisms need to offer high security against quantum attacks with low computation and communication costs. This paper presents a lightweight lattice-based post-quantum authentication and key-establishment scheme for heterogeneous IoT environment. The framework incorporates quantum-resistant communication with low resource-cost, based on a lattice framework, in conjunction with mutual authentication, secure session-key establishment, and key confirmation. A synthetic data set of various IoT devices, network technologies, and attack scenarios has been used to evaluate the performance. The results showed low authentication and key-establishment latency, moderate processor, memory and energy consumption, high protocol reliability, and high resistance against replay, impersonation, packet-tampering and man-in-the-middle attacks. The results show that this proposed framework achieves the balance between security and implementation efficiency and is suitable for resource constrained IoT applications. The proposed approach is a practical solution that lays the groundwork for next-generation, intelligent and connected systems with scalable quantum resistant authentication.