Key Management Protocol Sample Contracts
Public Key Authentication and Key agreement in IoT devices with minimal airtime consumptionKey Management Protocol • November 16th, 2016
Abstract—Computational complexity of Public Key Cryptog- raphy over sensor nodes is not anymore a blocking concern in modern devices which natively (and efficiently) support Elliptic Curve Cryptography. The problem has rather shifted towards the significant airtime consumption required to exchange multiple messages and certificates so as to perform authentication and key agreement. This letter addresses such problem by exploiting implicit certificates (Elliptic Curve Qu-Vanstone). We specifi- cally propose a novel Key Management Protocol which suitably integrates implicit certificates with a standard Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman exchange, and performs authentication and key derivation. As confirmed by a proof-of-concept implementation and relevant experimental results, the proposed Key Management Protocol guarantees maximal airtime savings (up to 86,7%) with respect to conventional approaches, robust key negotiation, fast re-keying, and efficient protection against replay attacks.