Mutual Authentication Method for WSNs Based on the Three-Card Trick Ancient Card Game

Sensor networks are often used to collect data in the environment. Nodes are used to sense the environment and sinks can be used then to collect data from the nodes and transfer them to a backend server for processing, analysis and/or visualization. As sensor nodes can collect critical data (e.g. for medical or military purposes), security is a crucial issue. This article presents a novel mechanism to perform a lightweight mutual authentication between a node and a sink based on simple processor operations and two messages only.