Secure CoAP Application Layer Protocol for the Internet of Things Using Hermitian Curves

Internet of Things (IoT) is a modern technology that allows devices to sense status and take suitable reactions without human interference; this leads machines to interact directly with another machine, called machine to machine (m2m) communication. Many network technologies were involved in making the IoT idea work well. Devices in IoT are connected through the wireless network. Thus, different protocols on different network layers are used in IoT. One of the primary routing protocols used on the application layer is Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) which is a new web application transfer protocol. Where it is better suited to constrained environments than HTTP for IoT. In this study, Hermitian-based Cryptosystem (HBC) is applied on the CoAP protocol in order to increase the security of IoT. The Hermitian curve is an algebraic geometric curve capable of generating a vast number of points. Simulation results are presented, showing significant performance improvements of AG codes over Hermitian codes against Reed-Solomon (RS) codes and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). This study proved that HBC outperformed the RS and ECC in terms of several points and key length, which leads to increase security.