HLWEA-IOT: Hybrid Lightweight Encryption Algorithm Based Secure Data Transmission in IoT-MQTT Networks

Internet of things (IoT) devices can store and manage the real-time data created by many restricted Internet-connected devices. If one of the nodes were compromised due to Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack, the network might suffer significant damage. Due to the limited resources of constrained devices, it is difficult to incorporate appropriate cryptographic capabilities. Hence lightweight cryptography strives to meet the security needs of situations with few resource-constrained devices. In this paper, the framework is constructed using the smart aircraft environment monitoring system (SAEMS) and created with the help of nodes and the message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol for communicating the sensor data. A hybrid lightweight encryption algorithm (HLWEA) is proposed to mitigate the MITM attack on IoT devices. The HLWEA comprises (i) Key generation and (ii) encryption and decryption. The proposed method achieves an encryption time of 0.0309 ms; encryption bandwidth is 19.02 kbps, decryption time of 0.029 ms and decryption bandwidth of 19.36 kpbs. The proposed implementation is a smaller key size, minimal time complexity, and enhanced real-time cryptography-capable security.