{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,10]],"date-time":"2025-10-10T01:40:55Z","timestamp":1760060455423,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":63,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"9","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,23]],"date-time":"2025-08-23T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1755907200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Computers"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) play a critical role in Industry 4.0 environments, enabling real-time monitoring and control of industrial processes. However, existing lightweight authentication protocols for IWSNs remain vulnerable to sophisticated security attacks because of inadequate initial authentication phases. This study presents a security analysis of Gope et al.\u2019s PUF-based authentication protocol for IWSNs and identifies critical vulnerabilities that enable man-in-the-middle (MITM) and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. We demonstrate that Gope et al.\u2019s protocol is susceptible to MITM attacks during both authentication and Secure Periodical Data Collection (SPDC), allowing adversaries to derive session keys and compromise communication confidentiality. Our analysis reveals that the sensor registration phase of the protocol lacks proper authentication mechanisms, enabling attackers to perform unauthorized PUF queries and subsequently mount successful attacks. To address these vulnerabilities, we propose an enhanced authentication scheme that introduces a sensor-initiated registration process. In our improved protocol, sensor nodes generate and control PUF challenges rather than passively responding to gateway requests. This modification prevents unauthorized PUF queries while preserving the lightweight characteristics essential for resource-constrained IWSN deployments. Security analysis demonstrates that our enhanced scheme effectively mitigates the identified MITM and DoS attacks without introducing significant computational or communication overhead. The proposed modifications maintain compatibility with the existing IWSN infrastructure while strengthening the overall security posture. Comparative analysis shows that our solution addresses the security weaknesses of the original protocol while preserving its practical advantages for industrial use. The enhanced protocol provides a practical and secure solution for real-time data access in IWSNs, making it suitable for deployment in mission-critical industrial environments where both security and efficiency are paramount.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/computers14090347","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,25]],"date-time":"2025-08-25T00:09:53Z","timestamp":1756080593000},"page":"347","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["MITM- and DoS-Resistant PUF Authentication for Industrial WSNs via Sensor-Initiated Registration"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"14","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0007-2557-8705","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ashraf","family":"Alyanbaawi","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Computer Science and Engineering, Taibah University, Yanbu 966144, Saudi Arabia"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,23]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2941","DOI":"10.1080\/00207543.2018.1444806","article-title":"Industry 4.0: State of the art and future trends","volume":"56","author":"Xu","year":"2018","journal-title":"Int. J. Prod. Res."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"111","DOI":"10.1007\/s40684-016-0015-5","article-title":"Smart manufacturing: Past research, present findings, and future directions","volume":"3","author":"Kang","year":"2016","journal-title":"Int. J. Precis. Eng. Manuf.-Green Tech."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"622","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2015.2435000","article-title":"Recent advances in industrial wireless sensor networks toward efficient management in IoT","volume":"3","author":"Sheng","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4258","DOI":"10.1109\/TIE.2009.2015754","article-title":"Industrial wireless sensor networks: Challenges, design principles, and technical approaches","volume":"56","author":"Gungor","year":"2009","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"393","DOI":"10.1016\/S1389-1286(01)00302-4","article-title":"Wireless sensor networks: A survey","volume":"38","author":"Akyildiz","year":"2002","journal-title":"Comput. Netw."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2292","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comnet.2008.04.002","article-title":"Wireless sensor network survey","volume":"52","author":"Yick","year":"2008","journal-title":"Comput. Netw."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sen, J. (2012). Security and privacy issues in wireless sensor networks. Wireless Sensor Networks: Current Status and Future Trends, CRC Press.","DOI":"10.1201\/b13092-21"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"247","DOI":"10.1109\/JSAC.2005.861382","article-title":"Location-based compromise-tolerant security mechanisms for wireless sensor networks","volume":"24","author":"Zhang","year":"2006","journal-title":"IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun."},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"Cardenas, A.A., Amin, S., and Sastry, S. (2008, January 29). Research challenges for the security of control systems. Proceedings of the 3rd USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Security, San Jose, CA, USA."},{"key":"ref_10","unstructured":"Zhu, B., Joseph, A., and Sastry, S. (2011, January 19\u201322). A taxonomy of cyber attacks on SCADA systems. Proceedings of the IEEE Internet of Things (iThings\/CPSCom), Dalian, China."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"429","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comnet.2017.03.013","article-title":"Anonymous mutual authentication and key agreement scheme for wearable sensors in wireless body area networks","volume":"129","author":"Li","year":"2017","journal-title":"Comput. Netw."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"269","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2017.2780232","article-title":"LDAKM-EIoT: Lightweight device authentication and key management mechanism for edge-based IoT deployment","volume":"5","author":"Wazid","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4081","DOI":"10.1109\/TII.2018.2834351","article-title":"Measuring two-factor authentication schemes for real-time data access in industrial wireless sensor networks","volume":"14","author":"Wang","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Ind. Inf."},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"55382","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2019.2912998","article-title":"Provably secure ECC-based device access control and key agreement protocol for IoT environment","volume":"7","author":"Das","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1126","DOI":"10.1109\/JPROC.2014.2320516","article-title":"Physical unclonable functions and applications: A tutorial","volume":"102","author":"Herder","year":"2014","journal-title":"Proc. IEEE"},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Gassend, B., Clarke, D., Van Dijk, M., and Devadas, S. (2002, January 18\u201322). Silicon physical random functions. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, Washington, DC, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/586131.586132"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Maes, R., and Verbauwhede, I. (2010). Physically unclonable functions: A study on the state of the art and future research directions. Towards Hardware-Intrinsic Security, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-14452-3_1"},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2026","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1074376","article-title":"Physical one-way functions","volume":"297","author":"Pappu","year":"2002","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"42","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comnet.2016.01.006","article-title":"Design of an anonymity-preserving three-factor authenticated key exchange protocol for wireless sensor networks","volume":"101","author":"Amin","year":"2016","journal-title":"Comput. Netw."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3376","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2017.2673239","article-title":"Lightweight three-factor authentication and key agreement protocol for internet-integrated wireless sensor networks","volume":"5","author":"Jiang","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2266","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comnet.2012.12.018","article-title":"On the features and challenges of security and privacy in distributed internet of things","volume":"57","author":"Roman","year":"2013","journal-title":"Comput. Netw."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"146","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comnet.2014.11.008","article-title":"Security, privacy and trust in internet of things: The road ahead","volume":"76","author":"Sicari","year":"2015","journal-title":"Comput. Netw."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"R\u00fchrmair, U., Devadas, S., and Koushanfar, F. (2012). Security based on physical unclonability and disorder. Introduction to Hardware Security and Trust, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-1-4419-8080-9_4"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Suh, G.E., and Devadas, S. (2007, January 4\u20138). Physical unclonable functions for device authentication and secret key generation. Proceedings of the 44th ACM\/IEEE Design Automation Conference, San Diego, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/DAC.2007.375043"},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1198","DOI":"10.1109\/TC.2008.212","article-title":"Power-up SRAM state as an identifying fingerprint and source of true random numbers","volume":"58","author":"Holcomb","year":"2009","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Comput."},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1200","DOI":"10.1109\/TVLSI.2005.859470","article-title":"Extracting secret keys from integrated circuits","volume":"13","author":"Lim","year":"2005","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Very Large Scale Integr. (VLSI) Syst."},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4957","DOI":"10.1109\/TII.2019.2895030","article-title":"Lightweight and physically secure anonymous mutual authentication protocol for real-time data access in industrial wireless sensor networks","volume":"15","author":"Gope","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Ind. Inf."},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1910","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2017.2749883","article-title":"A survey of potential security issues in existing wireless sensor network protocols","volume":"4","author":"McCann","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"152","DOI":"10.1016\/j.adhoc.2015.05.014","article-title":"An efficient user authentication and key agreement scheme for heterogeneous wireless sensor network tailored for the Internet of Things environment","volume":"36","author":"Farash","year":"2016","journal-title":"Ad Hoc Netw."},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"49","DOI":"10.1007\/s00530-013-0346-9","article-title":"Robust anonymous authentication protocol for health-care applications using wireless medical sensor networks","volume":"21","author":"He","year":"2015","journal-title":"Multimedia Syst."},{"key":"ref_31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"96","DOI":"10.1016\/j.adhoc.2014.03.009","article-title":"A novel user authentication and key agreement scheme for heterogeneous ad hoc wireless sensor networks, based on the Internet of Things notion","volume":"20","author":"Brumen","year":"2014","journal-title":"Ad Hoc Netw."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3028","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2017.2676119","article-title":"Secure signature-based authenticated key establishment scheme for future IoT applications","volume":"5","author":"Challa","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4596","DOI":"10.1002\/sec.1652","article-title":"Design of sinkhole node detection mechanism for hierarchical wireless sensor networks","volume":"9","author":"Wazid","year":"2016","journal-title":"Secur. Commun. Netw."},{"key":"ref_34","first-page":"1","article-title":"Industry 4.0: A survey on technologies, applications and open research issues","volume":"6","author":"Lu","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. Ind. Inf. Integr."},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mahmoud, R., Yousuf, T., Aloul, F., and Zualkernan, I. (2015, January 14\u201316). Internet of things (IoT) security: Current status, challenges and prospective measures. Proceedings of the Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (ICITST), London, UK.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICITST.2015.7412116"},{"key":"ref_36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"25","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jnca.2017.02.009","article-title":"A survey of intrusion detection in Internet of Things","volume":"84","author":"Miani","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. Netw. Comput. Appl."},{"key":"ref_37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"10","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jnca.2017.04.002","article-title":"Internet of Things security: A survey","volume":"88","author":"Alaba","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. Netw. Comput. Appl."},{"key":"ref_38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1294","DOI":"10.1109\/COMST.2015.2388550","article-title":"Security for the internet of things: A survey of existing protocols and open research issues","volume":"17","author":"Granjal","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor."},{"key":"ref_39","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"26","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2017.1600363CM","article-title":"Security and privacy for cloud-based IoT: Challenges","volume":"55","author":"Zhou","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1250","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2017.2694844","article-title":"A survey on security and privacy issues in Internet-of-Things","volume":"4","author":"Yang","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1125","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2017.2683200","article-title":"A survey on internet of things: Architecture, enabling technologies, security and privacy, and applications","volume":"4","author":"Lin","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_42","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"82721","DOI":"10.1109\/ACCESS.2019.2924045","article-title":"A survey on IoT security: Application areas, security threats, and solution architectures","volume":"7","author":"Hassija","year":"2019","journal-title":"IEEE Access"},{"key":"ref_43","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sadeghi, A.R., Wachsmann, C., and Waidner, M. (2015, January 8\u201312). Security and privacy challenges in industrial internet of things. Proceedings of the Design Automation Conference (DAC), San Francisco, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/2744769.2747942"},{"key":"ref_44","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2661","DOI":"10.1016\/j.adhoc.2013.04.014","article-title":"SVELTE: Real-time intrusion detection in the Internet of Things","volume":"11","author":"Raza","year":"2013","journal-title":"Ad Hoc Netw."},{"key":"ref_45","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"968","DOI":"10.1109\/TIFS.2016.2647225","article-title":"Anonymous secure framework in connected smart home environments","volume":"12","author":"Kumar","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur."},{"key":"ref_46","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"122","DOI":"10.1109\/MCOM.2017.1600267CM","article-title":"Security and privacy in smart city applications: Challenges and solutions","volume":"55","author":"Zhang","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Commun. Mag."},{"key":"ref_47","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"46","DOI":"10.1109\/MC.2013.74","article-title":"Cyberentity security in the internet of things","volume":"46","author":"Ning","year":"2013","journal-title":"Computer"},{"key":"ref_48","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Zhao, K., and Ge, L. (2013, January 14\u201315). A survey on the internet of things security. Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Security, Emeishan, China.","DOI":"10.1109\/CIS.2013.145"},{"key":"ref_49","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1876","DOI":"10.1109\/TIFS.2013.2279798","article-title":"PUF modeling attacks on simulated and silicon data","volume":"8","author":"Sehnke","year":"2013","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur."},{"key":"ref_50","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Machida, T., Yamamoto, D., Iwamoto, M., and Sakiyama, K. (2014, January 7\u201310). A new mode of operation for arbiter PUF to improve uniqueness on FPGA. Proceedings of the Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, Warsaw, Poland.","DOI":"10.15439\/2014F140"},{"key":"ref_51","first-page":"215","article-title":"Optical PUFs reloaded","volume":"2013","author":"Hilgers","year":"2013","journal-title":"IACR Cryptol. ePrint Arch."},{"key":"ref_52","unstructured":"Alvarez, R., Peris-Lopez, P., and Tapiador, J.E. (2012). Physical unclonable functions: A piece-wise linear approach. Information Security and Privacy Research, Springer."},{"key":"ref_53","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Majzoobi, M., Koushanfar, F., and Potkonjak, M. (2008, January 10\u201313). Lightweight secure PUFs. Proceedings of the IEEE\/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, San Jose, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICCAD.2008.4681648"},{"key":"ref_54","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Helfmeier, C., Boit, C., Nedospasov, D., and Seifert, J.P. (2013, January 2\u20133). Cloning physically unclonable functions. Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust, Austin, TX, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/HST.2013.6581556"},{"key":"ref_55","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Yu, M.D., M\u2019Raihi, D., Verbauwhede, I., and Devadas, S. (2014, January 6\u20137). A noise bifurcation architecture for linear additive physical functions. Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust, Arlington, VA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/HST.2014.6855582"},{"key":"ref_56","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Delvaux, J., and Verbauwhede, I. (2013, January 2\u20133). Side channel modeling attacks on 65nm arbiter PUFs exploiting CMOS device variation. Proceedings of the Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition, Austin, TX, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/HST.2013.6581579"},{"key":"ref_57","first-page":"1","article-title":"A PUF-based secure communication protocol for IoT","volume":"16","author":"Chatterjee","year":"2017","journal-title":"ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_58","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Xu, T., Wendt, J.B., and Potkonjak, M. (2014, January 2\u20136). Security of IoT systems: Design challenges and opportunities. Proceedings of the IEEE\/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, San Jose, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICCAD.2014.7001385"},{"key":"ref_59","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Braeken, A. (2018). PUF based authentication protocol for IoT. Symmetry, 10.","DOI":"10.3390\/sym10080352"},{"key":"ref_60","unstructured":"Alamelou, Q., Berthier, P.E., Cachet, C., Cagli, E., Dassance, F., Durvaux, F., Fontaine, C., Giry, C., and Grosso, V. (2018). A PUF-based mutual authentication protocol for IoT. Cryptology and Network Security, Springer."},{"key":"ref_61","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Tsudik, G. (2007). A family of dunces: Trivial RFID identification and authentication protocols. Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-75551-7_4"},{"key":"ref_62","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Peris-Lopez, P., Hernandez-Castro, J.C., Estevez-Tapiador, J.M., and Ribagorda, A. (2006). RFID systems: A survey on security threats and proposed solutions. Personal Wireless Communications, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/11872153_14"},{"key":"ref_63","unstructured":"Wong, K.H., Zheng, Y., Cao, J., and Wang, S. (2006, January 5\u20137). A dynamic user authentication scheme for wireless sensor networks. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Sensor Networks, Ubiquitous, and Trustworthy Computing, Taichung, Taiwan."}],"container-title":["Computers"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2073-431X\/14\/9\/347\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,9]],"date-time":"2025-10-09T18:34:57Z","timestamp":1760034897000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2073-431X\/14\/9\/347"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,23]]},"references-count":63,"journal-issue":{"issue":"9","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,9]]}},"alternative-id":["computers14090347"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/computers14090347","relation":{},"ISSN":["2073-431X"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"2073-431X"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,23]]}}}