A Lightweight Authentication Protocol for WSNs in Industry 4.0

Abstract

The advent of Industry 4.0 has significantly accelerated the integration of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) across diverse industrial environments, enabling real-time monitoring, intelligent decision-making and predictive maintenance. These sensor-driven cyber-physical systems form the backbone of smart factories by facilitating seamless data exchange across machines, control systems, and cloud platforms. Moreover, the deployment of WSNs enhances supply chain visibility, asset tracking, and environmental monitoring, contributing to improved safety, efficiency, and sustainability. However, the integration of WSNs into industrial ecosystems exposes them to a variety of security vulnerabilities, like DDoS, device hijacking, man-in-the-middle attacks, and ransomware, which may compromise operational safety and the confidentiality of critical industrial data. Traditional security mechanisms, though effective in general computing environments, are often unsuitable for WSNs due to high processing delays and energy demands. In Industry 4.0, IoT and WSN devices have very limited computation capability, memory, and energy. In such a scenario, light weight authentication schemes enable secure communication with minimal overhead and hence support low-latency applications such as robotic coordination where delays are critical. This paper put forward a lightweight authentication protocol purpose-built for industrial automation scenarios, employing hash function and symmetric key cryptography to ensure mutual authentication and secure data exchange with minimal computational overhead. To confirm that the protocol satisfies its intended security goals, it is evaluated using two methods: automated formal verification with the ProVerif tool complemented by an additional informal security discussion. A comparative evaluation against existing schemes demonstrates that the proposed scheme offers an effective and resilient approach for addressing the evolving security challenges of Industry 4.0.