LAM-IoT: Lightweight Authentication Model for monitoring systems in IoT-enabled smart homes based on DID using IOTA

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an important technology; however, it has many security vul-nerabilities. The authentication process is essential for ensuring the security of the whole IoT systems, as it serves as the first line of defense against different cyber-attacks. Traditional techniques of authentication are frequently centralized, which are unable to satisfy the requirements of IoT in terms of scalability and resources' consumption. Some drawbacks of these techniques include their high computation costs, single point of failure, and violation of privacy. Decentralized authentication techniques are suggested as a solution to the problems with centralized authentication. Blockchain is a well-known technology that can be used to authenticate and grant high-trust, decentralized access to IoT devices and data. However, with its limitations in terms of scalability, throughput, and storage capacity, blockchain is an unsuitable option for devices with limited resources in the IoT environment. Hence, in order to overcome these problems, a more scalable solution approach is required to be formulated. In this paper, we propose a new lightweight authentication model for IoT-based smart house monitoring system utilizing IOTA Tangle, Decentralized Identifier (DID), and Stronghold vault technologies. We examined and confirmed the functionalities of the proposed model through automated security testing with the Scyther tool. The testing validated the proposed model's effectiveness. The model works efficiently in a constraint IoT environment, as shown by the analysis of additional assessment criteria like communication and storage costs.