The high level of security requirements and low capabilities of constrained devices that are connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) constitute a new challenge in terms of proposing an authentication solution that deals with the problem of energy constraints. The Host Identity Protocol Diet EXchange (HIP DEX) is primarily designed to be suitable for constrained devices and designed to be resistant to Denial of Service (DoS) and man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks. In this paper, we propose an efficient saving energy solution to secure end-to-end (E2E) communications based on the compression of the IPv6 over Low Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN) header for HIP DEX packets. We implement our solution in an IoT based-WSN over Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) in the application layer and Routing Protocol for Low power and lossy networks (RPL) in the routing layer. We also propose a novel distribution model that minimizes the number of signaling messages. Both proposed compression and distribution models for HIP DEX combined with an original implementation of an opportunistic association establishment of the handshake, constitute an efficient security solution for IoT. We called our solution Lightweight Compressed HIP DEX in the IoT (LC-DEX).
Keywords: 6LoWPAN; CoAP; Internet of Things; Lightweight Authentication; RPL; Wireless Sensor Network; energy consumption; mesh-under; opportunistic mode.