Enhancing Security in Digital Twin Ecosystems: A Lightweight Cryptographic Algorithm Perspective with TinyJambu

N the context of Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, ensuring the authenticity and security of device interactions is paramount. This study presents an authentication framework designed to validate the identity of physical IoT devices and their corresponding Digital Twins (DTs) within the Eclipse Ditto platform. Leveraging the lightweight yet robust tinyJAMBU authenticated encryption algorithm, our approach guarantees both data confidentiality and authenticity. To bolster the security afforded by tinyJAMBU, the authentication process demands a precise match between the decrypted cipher and the Digital Twin's unique ThingID. The system's integrity is enhanced through the dynamic creation of bidirectional communication channels exclusively post-authentication, ensuring that only authenticated devices can access and modify Digital Twin features. Additionally, all communication between the Digital Twin and the devices occurs over secure channels established using TLS/SSL over MQTT, mitigating risks such as Man-in-the-Middle attacks and eavesdropping. Our performance evaluation, which measured execution times, power consumption, and CPU usage. Power consumption for TinyJAMBU-128, TinyJAMBU-192, and TinyJAMBU-256 without TLS was 8 mAh, 8 mAh, and 9 mAh, respectively, and with TLS was 8 mAh, 9 mAh, and 10 mAh. CPU usage during encryption for TinyJAMBU-128, TinyJAMBU-192, and TinyJAMBU-256 was 46.20%, 49.20%, and 50.60% without TLS, and 46.80%, 49.45%, and 57.60% with TLS, respectively. Our comprehensive security analysis affirms the robustness and efficiency of the proposed scheme against prevalent threats.