کنفرانس مهندسی برق ایران

صفحه اصلی / سی و چهارمین کنفرانس بین المللی مهندسی برق

Lightweight Steganography for Enhancing Security in IoT Authentication Protocols

نویسندگان :

Asma Bavejdan¹ Ghazaleh Sarbishaei² Amir Masoud Aminian Modarres³

1- دانشگاه سجاد 2- عضو هیأت علمی دانشگاه سجاد 3- عضو هیأت علمی دانشگاه سجاد

کلمات کلیدی :

IoT security،authentication،steganography،nonce embedding،error correction coding (ECC)،lightweight protocols

چکیده :

Authentication is a fundamental component of Internet of Things (IoT) security, ensuring device legitimacy, message integrity, and protection against replay attacks. Lightweight authentication protocols, such as Yahalom, rely on random nonces and dynamic pseudonyms, which inherently create an opportunity for covert data embedding without altering protocol functionality. This paper proposes a lightweight and robust steganographic method, referred to as StegoSpread-ECC, for embedding secret information into protocol-level nonces. The proposed approach employs pseudo-random position generation, error correction coding for enhanced resilience, spreading techniques, and block-constrained embedding in order to preserve the statistical properties of nonces while maintaining essential security requirements such as freshness, anonymity, and unlinkability. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method introduces only minimal and controlled modifications to nonces, achieves high embedding efficiency, maintains reliable message recovery under practical IoT noise conditions, and preserves the entropy characteristics required for secure authentication. Overall, the proposed approach provides a secure, transparent, and resource-efficient steganographic layer suitable for IoT environments without disrupting authentication operations.