Chaotic ZKP based authentication and key distribution scheme in environmental monitoring CPS

Abstract

The Cyber Physical System (CPS) is an open system that combines physical, computational, and communication capabilities and bridges between the physical world and the cyber world. Based on the feedback loops between the computation components and the physical process, the CPS could implement the function of real-time sensing and dynamic monitoring. In particular, CPS that is implemented for environment monitoring can use Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication, where devices could be deployed in a hostile and time-varying environments and may be the target of many attacks. Therefore, providing security for the exchanged data is one of the main requirements to allow the accomplishment of the CPS’s mission. This paper proposes a chaotic Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) authentication and key distribution scheme to ensure security in a CPS. In this scheme, the chaotic Chebyshev polynomial is investigated to generate private and public keys whilst the ZKP protocol is used to validate the identity and the device’s public key. We demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed scheme and its resilience to man-in-the-middle attack. Also, we show that the achievement of key generation and distribution induces less energy consumption and reduces false rejection and acceptance rates.