An Efficient Secure Authentication and Key Establishment Scheme for M2M Communication in 6LoWPAN in Unattended Scenarios

Machine-to-machine (M2M) is an important part of Internet of Things (IoT), and is used to describe those technologies applied in wireless communication automatically between mechanics or electronics instruments. With the rapid development and wide application of the Internet of Things, IETF is assigned to design IPv6 over low power wireless personal area network (6LoWPAN). The address of IPv6 is indefinite, which means it can satisfy addressing requirements for M2M. The 6LoWPAN standard has clarified important issues in M2M, but communication security has not been effectively resolved. In this article, we analyzed the existing security protocol for M2M communication in 6LoWPAN. The analysis result shows that the protocol has the defect of data leakage after the node is captured. In addition, the EAKES6Lo protocol is also vulnerable to sinkhole attacks and plaintext-chosen attacks. Based on the above analysis, an M2M communication mutual authentication protocol based on 6LoWPAN in unattended operation is proposed. The protocol establishes a reasonable secret key distribution mechanism and designs an anti-capture attack detection method for unattended nodes to resist attacks, such as replay attacks, sinkhole attacks, plaintext-chosen attacks, and physical capture attacks. Finally, the security of the protocol is proved by BAN.