An efficient ECC and fuzzy verifier based user authentication protocol for IoT enabled WSNs

Abstract Internet of Things (IoT) enabled Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are spatially distributed sensor devices that monitor physical or environmental conditions, collect data, and transmit it to a central location for analysis. Ensuring integrity and privacy of data while transmitting it from se...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: T. Sudhakar, R. Praveen, V. Natarajan
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2025-03-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94550-9
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1849389912354193408
author T. Sudhakar
R. Praveen
V. Natarajan
author_facet T. Sudhakar
R. Praveen
V. Natarajan
author_sort T. Sudhakar
collection DOAJ
description Abstract Internet of Things (IoT) enabled Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are spatially distributed sensor devices that monitor physical or environmental conditions, collect data, and transmit it to a central location for analysis. Ensuring integrity and privacy of data while transmitting it from sensors to the data analytics servers is crucial in open network. Numerous mutual authentication schemes have been proposed to address this challenge. Each scheme comes with its own set of advantages and drawbacks. To address the drawbacks in the prevailing schemes, this work presents a strong Two-Factor authentication (2FA) technique designed using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and Fuzzy verifier. This approach combines the flexibility of the fuzzy verifier with the cryptographic strength of ECC to create a secure and user-friendly password authentication system to address the long-standing security-usability conflict with computational efficiency. Instead of storing a deterministic hash of the password, the system derives a fuzzy verifier password that includes randomness, makes computationally infeasible to derive. Also, the design tackles the inherent constraints of WSNs, such as their constrained processing resources and susceptibility to different types of attacks. To substantiate the efficacy of our approach, we formally validate its security using the Real-or-Random model. The comparative analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme achieves a computational cost of 8.9569 ms, which is significantly lower than that of existing schemes. Furthermore, security and functional requirements comparative assessment demonstrates the efficacy and feasibility of our strategy for safeguarding IoT-enabled WSN applications, rendering it a promising solution for implementation in real-world scenario with limited resources.
format Article
id doaj-art-5c6b3504d6f7433d856b32fc5b5dd610
institution Kabale University
issn 2045-2322
language English
publishDate 2025-03-01
publisher Nature Portfolio
record_format Article
series Scientific Reports
spelling doaj-art-5c6b3504d6f7433d856b32fc5b5dd6102025-08-20T03:41:49ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222025-03-0115111610.1038/s41598-025-94550-9An efficient ECC and fuzzy verifier based user authentication protocol for IoT enabled WSNsT. Sudhakar0R. Praveen1V. Natarajan2Department of Computer Technology, Anna UniversityDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology PuducherryDepartment of Instrumentation Engineering, Anna UniversityAbstract Internet of Things (IoT) enabled Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are spatially distributed sensor devices that monitor physical or environmental conditions, collect data, and transmit it to a central location for analysis. Ensuring integrity and privacy of data while transmitting it from sensors to the data analytics servers is crucial in open network. Numerous mutual authentication schemes have been proposed to address this challenge. Each scheme comes with its own set of advantages and drawbacks. To address the drawbacks in the prevailing schemes, this work presents a strong Two-Factor authentication (2FA) technique designed using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and Fuzzy verifier. This approach combines the flexibility of the fuzzy verifier with the cryptographic strength of ECC to create a secure and user-friendly password authentication system to address the long-standing security-usability conflict with computational efficiency. Instead of storing a deterministic hash of the password, the system derives a fuzzy verifier password that includes randomness, makes computationally infeasible to derive. Also, the design tackles the inherent constraints of WSNs, such as their constrained processing resources and susceptibility to different types of attacks. To substantiate the efficacy of our approach, we formally validate its security using the Real-or-Random model. The comparative analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme achieves a computational cost of 8.9569 ms, which is significantly lower than that of existing schemes. Furthermore, security and functional requirements comparative assessment demonstrates the efficacy and feasibility of our strategy for safeguarding IoT-enabled WSN applications, rendering it a promising solution for implementation in real-world scenario with limited resources.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94550-9IoT network securityUser authenticationSecure sessionReal-or-random modelAttack resilience
spellingShingle T. Sudhakar
R. Praveen
V. Natarajan
An efficient ECC and fuzzy verifier based user authentication protocol for IoT enabled WSNs
Scientific Reports
IoT network security
User authentication
Secure session
Real-or-random model
Attack resilience
title An efficient ECC and fuzzy verifier based user authentication protocol for IoT enabled WSNs
title_full An efficient ECC and fuzzy verifier based user authentication protocol for IoT enabled WSNs
title_fullStr An efficient ECC and fuzzy verifier based user authentication protocol for IoT enabled WSNs
title_full_unstemmed An efficient ECC and fuzzy verifier based user authentication protocol for IoT enabled WSNs
title_short An efficient ECC and fuzzy verifier based user authentication protocol for IoT enabled WSNs
title_sort efficient ecc and fuzzy verifier based user authentication protocol for iot enabled wsns
topic IoT network security
User authentication
Secure session
Real-or-random model
Attack resilience
url https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-94550-9
work_keys_str_mv AT tsudhakar anefficienteccandfuzzyverifierbaseduserauthenticationprotocolforiotenabledwsns
AT rpraveen anefficienteccandfuzzyverifierbaseduserauthenticationprotocolforiotenabledwsns
AT vnatarajan anefficienteccandfuzzyverifierbaseduserauthenticationprotocolforiotenabledwsns
AT tsudhakar efficienteccandfuzzyverifierbaseduserauthenticationprotocolforiotenabledwsns
AT rpraveen efficienteccandfuzzyverifierbaseduserauthenticationprotocolforiotenabledwsns
AT vnatarajan efficienteccandfuzzyverifierbaseduserauthenticationprotocolforiotenabledwsns