Tobias Markmann: Securing Identities in the IoT

Constrained computer networks are an emerging topic in research and early deployment, starting with wireless sensor networks, and continuing with the broader acceptance of the "Internet of Things" spanning the entire globe. Security in these networks is essential to protect them from abuse, and to introduce trustworthiness amongst their users. Classic protocols for this setting describe rather complex and limiting - while lightweight - security methods by using symmetric cryptography.

Identity-based cryptography, a type of asymmetric cryptography, is a natural fit for wireless sensor networks, due to their inherent unconditionally trusted base station. Compared to more traditional asymmetric signatures, ID-based signatures do not need additional certificates or dedicated public keys, resulting in a smaller overhead for authentication. However, there are also various proposal to deal with the key escrow problem of ID-based cryptography, making it more appealing for scenarios where a common trusted third-party doesn't exist.

This talk introduces the principals of ID-based signatures and presents an overview of the mathematical background of elliptic curve cryptography and pairing based cryptography. Furthermore three different ID-based signature schemes, based on the RSA problem, elliptic curves, and bilinear pairings, will briefly be described. Finally, a practical evaluation of them using the Relic toolkit is presented and discussed.

Slides