Treffer: Authentication protocol for the Internet of Drones with fog computing based on aggregate signatures for forest inventory.

The Internet of Drones (IoD) has become increasingly important in applications such as forest inventory, leveraging advanced sensors and internet connectivity to enable efficient data collection. Compared to traditional methods, IoD offers superior cost-effectiveness. However, its reliance on public channels, unreliable connectivity, and dynamic environments poses significant security and privacy challenges. Safeguarding forest inventory data is essential to maintaining accuracy, preventing unauthorized access, and mitigating the risk of data manipulation, which can lead to suboptimal management decisions. To address these concerns, it is essential to design a lightweight authentication protocol that secures IoD communication, accounts for network bandwidth limitations and scalability, and supports integration with emerging technologies. This manuscript introduces a new Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocol specifically designed for the Internet of Drones (IoD), leveraging asymmetric cryptography and aggregate signatures to enhance security and privacy in forest inventories with fog computing. Its robustness was confirmed through informal and formal security analyses by the AVISPA tool and the ROR model, demonstrating resistance to known attacks and superior communication, computational, and energy performance compared to existing protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]