An Offline Direct Authentication Scheme for the Internet of Medical Things Based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Nowadays, we face improvements in the field of the Internet of Things (IoT). The primary focus of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is to gather health data from patients and provide healthcare services accordingly. Hence, researchers have been focusing on this wide-ranging system that causes the patient’s private data disclosure. This paper suggests an authentication scheme for IoMT devices to improve the performance and security level of current authentication schemes. The proposed authentication scheme involves the creation of a model for authentication that operates offline and directly verifies identities which effectively authenticates users and IoMT devices within the network established in the local area. Additionally, authentication of all parts of the system is carried out through an online authentication server used by the system. This proposed authentication scheme relies on the utilization of the Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), one-way hash function, and XOR operation. It’s well-suited for the resource-constrained IoMT architecture. Further, this scheme provides stronger security protection, achieves several security goals, and ensures efficiency. To establish its security, this work undergoes a comprehensive analysis. It is evaluated using the extensively utilized ’Real-Or-Random (ROR)’ model, ensuring its robustness. Furthermore, its correctness is proved through BAN-logic, and a formal security verification is conducted using the widely accepted ‘Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA)’ tool. Additionally, an informal security analysis is carried out. Finally, the system successfully accomplishes mutual authentication with lower computation and communication costs than other schemes. Additionally, it offers a range of desired attributes. The experimentation results demonstrate that the suggested scheme ensures that the computation overhead remains minimal (30.1978 m) and the communication overhead minimized to the greatest extent possible (544 bits). These results establish the suitability of the proposed work for the IoMT.