MQTT based Secure Transport Layer Communication for Mutual Authentication in IoT Network

Recent advancements in the communication protocols and the networking technologies have enabled connectivity of a wide range of objects, resulting in the Internet of Things (IoT) network. The protocols like MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT), as well as Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) are moderately capable of providing the management of heterogeneous wireless sensor networks even in an environment with very limited bandwidth. In this paper, we develop a lightweight encryption algorithm to obtain reliable secure data transmission between IoT devices. We propose a Secure Reliable Message Communication (SEC-RMC) protocol using Mosquitto MQTT message broker with cryptographic enhancements to offer security services and also provide the mutual authentication in the IoT environment at the transport layer. The proposed scheme decreases the number of messages transmitted between the devices. Also, the authentication scheme provides resistance to DNS hacking, routing table poisoning and packet mistreatment. On comparison with the existing methods, the transmission time has been reduced by 80% in this work.