On The Fly Diffie Hellman for IoT

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a fast growing field of devices being added to an interconnected environment in an abstract heterogeneous array of servers and other devices, called smart environments, ranging from private local (home) environments to nation-wide infrastructures, often accessible via unsecured wireless communications and information technologies, hence, massively open to attacks. In this paper we address some of issues that arise when connecting smart devices endowed with low computational capabilities to a home gateway via unsecured wireless communication channels, by using a One Time Pad (OTP) protocol based upon an On-the-fly Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange. Our assumptions are that only a user and the gateway have enough processing power to perform - say - secured RSA encrypted communication, hence relaxing the need for a trusted secure server outside the domain and that the protocol should at least be secure for a range of known attacks, as replay or DoS attacks.