SAAF-IoD: Secure and Anonymous Authentication Framework for the Internet of Drones

Internet of Drones (IoD) offers several advantages, such as enabling ground communications in areas with connectivity limitations due to physical obstacles. However, IoD also introduces new security vulnerabilities. For instance, an attacker could launch a drone capture attack to obtain confidential credentials and inject counterfeit information into the IoD network, jeopardizing its smooth operation. In such scenarios, authentication plays a crucial role in ensuring security. Unfortunately, the existing authentication frameworks are insufficient to protect against attacks in the IoD environment. In this article, we propose a secure and anonymous authentication framework called SAAF-IoD for the IoD. SAAF-IoD utilizes a chaotic map in combination with symmetric encryption and hash functions. It allows external users of the IoD network to establish a session key (SK) with the deployed drone by performing mutual authentication with the Ground-Station Server (GS). The proposed SAAF-IoD framework provides resistance against privileged insider attacks and GS bypass attacks. We validate the resilience of SAAF-IoD against various security attacks through both formal and informal analyses. Furthermore, we compare the efficiency of the proposed framework with a benchmark scheme in terms of communication and computational costs. Our results demonstrate that SAAF-IoD requires fewer resources than the relevant schemes while offering enhanced security features.