Application-layer security mechanism for M2M communication over SMS

With an increasing number of M2M devices communicating over SMS, the need for security was raised because standard SMS messaging service does not provide any light-weight security mechanisms. In this paper we propose hybrid application-layer security with compression for M2M communication over SMS. The signature is calculated using device IMEI, secret key and payload; thus signature is not always the same, which prevents duplicated/stolen signature and replay attack and it provides a content integrity check. The security is implemented on android powered mobile devices and evaluated against non-secure payload for message response time and bandwidth in live GSM network. Evaluation shows that SMS delivery time is not influenced by this security mechanism. In addition compression can save bandwidth for more verbose and longer payloads.