Multidevice Collaborative Authentication for Internet of Things

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices with weak passwords poses significant challenges to network security. Hackers can easily compromise these IoT devices by brute-forcing their passwords and then utilize them to launch severe attacks such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). To defeat such threats, an effective solution is to ensure that each device has a strong, high-strength password. However, in practice, this poses a significant challenge, as configuring and managing passwords for such a vast number of devices is highly complex. In this work, we propose a novel Multi-Device Collaborative Authentication (MDCA) system that enables IoT devices to be protected by strong passwords without altering their original weak ones. Our approach is inspired by group defense strategies prevalent in nature: animals cooperate and form groups to enhance their chances of survival. Intuitively, IoT devices can also collaborate to improve their security. Specifically, in our design, devices with strong passwords provide authentication for devices having weak credentials, and the latter can generate clues to detect brute-force attacks. Once these attacks are detected, requests to IoT devices are first authenticated by several other strong password protected devices, and if all authentications succeed, the requests are then permitted. We have implemented the proposed system and theoretically analyzed its security. The experimental results match the theoretical analysis well.