Implication of Lightweight and Robust Hash Function to Support Key Exchange in Health Sensor Networks

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) applications are critical for the fast delivery of health information/data in different environments. The wireless sensor network (WSN) can be used within IoT applications to collect this information in the electronic-health sector. However, the essential drawback of WSN and health applications is ensuring that patient and healthcare provider data/information is protected. In addition, exchanging keys and joining the network is the first/most important line of defense to protect health information. Amid all this, the previous search has introduced many key exchange protocols but still suffers from security and performance issues for WSNs and user devices. In this research, we propose a new protocol for exchanging keys and joining the network using security algorithms that are Elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH) and QUARK hash (qh). We focused on applying lightweight and high-security techniques to reduce the burden on WSN resources, by adopting a solid methodological approach to support security first and performance second. The security analysis is simulated with the Scyther tool, and the results indicate that our protocol is able to block key exchange attacks known in the existing research. Furthermore, we carried out a comparison with the results of the recent search in terms of performance, our protocol provides better performance results than the results of the existing search.