An Access Control Protocol for Embedded Devices

Embedded devices are today important elements of critical infrastructures like networking, telecommunications, electric/gas/water utility automation, and industrial automation. Access to these embedded devices should be restricted and strictly controlled. Current authentication schemes for embedded devices - mainly password based - do not provide the necessary security and scalable manageability. This paper presents the specific requirements for authentication and access control to embedded devices and proposes a novel, public-key based protocol for secure access and communication to embedded servers.