An anonymous device to device access control based on secure certificate for internet of medical things systems

• We have designed a device-to-device direct authentication scheme for IoMT. • In the proposed scheme, each device uses ECC based secure certificate for authentication purposes. • In addition to the provision of traditional security requirements, the proposed scheme resists physical capturing and related attacks. • The proposed scheme is secure under the formal RoR model. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is structured upon both the sensing and communication infrastructure and computation facilities. The IoMT provides the convenient and cheapest ways for healthcare by aiding the remote access to the patients’ physiological data and using machine learning techniques for help in diagnosis. The communication delays in IoMT can be very harmful to healthcare. Device to device (D2D) secure communication is a vital area that can reduce communication delays; otherwise, caused due to the mediation of a third party. To substantiate a secure D2D communication framework, some schemes were recently proposed to secure D2D based communication infrastructure suitable for IoMT-based environments. However, the insecurities of some schemes against device physical capture attack and non-provision of anonymity along with related attacks are evident from the literature. This calls for a D2D secure access control system for realizing sustainable smart healthcare. In this article, using elliptic curve cryptography, a certificate based D2D access control scheme for IoMT systems (D2DAC-IoMT) is proposed. The security of the proposed D2DAC-IoMT is substantiated through formal and informal methods. Moreover, the performance analysis affirms that the proposed scheme provides a good trade-off between security and efficiency compared with some recent schemes.