An EAP based privacy preserving authentication and key agreement protocol for WLAN-IOT devices

Abstract The development of a secure authentication protocol to protect Internet of Things (IoT) devices as they become increasingly integrated into Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) presents a significant challenge in terms of addressing new cyber threats and ensuring dependable connectivity. There are numerous symmetric and asymmetric encryption protocols that were developed, but they are vulnerable to various attacks. In a WLAN environment, we introduce an authentication protocol for the Internet of Things (IoT) that is based on the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) framework and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). This method is designed for mutual authentication with key agreement. An exhaustive security analysis, both formal and informal, illustrates the protocol's resilience against both known and emerging threats. The performance evaluation shows that the proposed solution is excellent for IoT applications because it provides better security while using less computing power and communication resources compared to the best existing protocols.