KEEP: Secure and Efficient Communication for Distributed IoT Devices

Security over mobile Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices is critical due to the open nature of distributed wireless communication. To efficiently establish a secure connection between two communication parties, a fast mobile key extraction protocol, KEEP, is proposed. KEEP fastly generates similar bit sequences from two communication parties' measurements of channel-state information (CSI) of different subcarriers. Then, a distributed “verification-recombination” mechanism is introduced to generate the same encryption key from bit sequences without the public-key authentication, digital signature, or key distribution center of the other party. We implemented real-world experiments using commercial off-the-shelf 802.11n devices to evaluate the performance of KEEP in various scenarios. Theoretical analysis and experimental verification show that KEEP is more secure, effective, and reliable than the state-of-the-art methods.