With the rapid development of technology based on the Internet of Things (IoT), numerous IoT devices are being used on a daily basis. The rise in cloud computing plays a crucial role in solving the resource constraints of IoT devices and in promoting resource sharing, whereby users can access IoT services provided in various environments. However, this complex and open wireless network environment poses security and privacy challenges. Therefore, designing a secure authentication protocol is crucial to protecting user privacy in IoT services. In this paper, a lightweight authentication protocol was designed for IoT-enabled cloud computing environments. A real or random model, and the automatic verification tool ProVerif were used to conduct a formal security analysis. Its security was further proved through an informal analysis. Finally, through security and performance comparisons, our protocol was confirmed to be relatively secure and to display a good performance.
Keywords: IoT; authentication protocol; cloud computing; formal security analysis.