REPACA: Robust ECC based privacy-controlled mutual authentication and session key sharing protocol in coalmines application with provable security

The underground environment and its components are susceptible to various attacks due to their role in monitoring environmental conditions and future predictions. Our review of existing literature reveals that most protocols are vulnerable to impersonation and Man-in-the-Middle attacks, which pose significant risks of data theft from sensors. Additionally, these protocols often impose high computational loads on the sensors. To address these challenges, this article presents an inter-mutual authentication scheme tailored for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). We propose a secure authentication and key agreement protocol using the elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC), which not only provides session key generation and authentication but also protects against several potential attacks. We conducted comprehensive security analyses, including both formal and informal methods, to validate the robustness of our protocol. The informal analysis, based on a threat model, demonstrates the protocol's effectiveness against various critical attacks. The Random Oracle (RoR) model further establishes that breaking the session key security is challenging. Simulations using Scyther confirm that private parameters remain secure during execution, while AVISPA simulations validate the protocol's resilience against replay attack and Man-in-the-Middle attacks. Furthermore, we assessed the security features, computational and communication costs, and overall performance of the proposed scheme, comparing it with existing studies. Our findings indicate that the protocol offers an average improvement of 36.47% and 48-bits for computation and communication overheads. Additionally, this work also offers enhanced security (secure from all possible attacks), making it an effective solution for securing sensitive data in WSNs.