Enhancing Security in ZigBee Wireless Sensor Networks: A New Approach and Mutual Authentication Scheme for D2D Communication

The latest version of ZigBee offers improvements in various aspects, including its low power consumption, flexibility, and cost-effective deployment. However, the challenges persist, as the upgraded protocol continues to suffer from a wide range of security weaknesses. Constrained wireless sensor network devices cannot use standard security protocols such as asymmetric cryptography mechanisms, which are resource-intensive and unsuitable for wireless sensor networks. ZigBee uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is the best recommended symmetric key block cipher for securing data of sensitive networks and applications. However, AES is expected to be vulnerable to some attacks in the near future. Moreover, symmetric cryptosystems have key management and authentication issues. To address these concerns in wireless sensor networks, particularly in ZigBee communications, in this paper, we propose a mutual authentication scheme that can dynamically update the secret key value of device-to-trust center (D2TC) and device-to-device (D2D) communications. In addition, the suggested solution improves the cryptographic strength of ZigBee communications by improving the encryption process of a regular AES without the need for asymmetric cryptography. To achieve that, we use a secure one-way hash function operation when D2TC and D2D mutually authenticate each other, along with bitwise exclusive OR operations to enhance cryptography. Once authentication is accomplished, the ZigBee-based participants can mutually agree upon a shared session key and exchange a secure value. This secure value is then integrated with the sensed data from the devices and utilized as input for regular AES encryption. By adopting this technique, the encrypted data gains robust protection against potential cryptanalysis attacks. Finally, a comparative analysis is conducted to illustrate how the proposed scheme effectively maintains efficiency in comparison to eight competitive schemes. This analysis evaluates the scheme’s performance across various factors, including security features, communication, and computational cost.