Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

On the Integration of Self-Sovereign Identity with TLS 1.3 Handshake to Build Trust in IoT Systems

Leonardo Perugini, Andrea Vesco

TL;DR

This work tackles the high cost and centralization of PKI for large-scale IoT by integrating Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) into the TLS 1.3 handshake. It introduces two SSI authentication modes—Verifiable Credentials (VC) and Decentralized Identifiers (DID)—and a hybrid fallback to preserve interoperability with X.509. The authors design new TLS extensions and messages, implement them in an OpenSSL provider, and develop a closed-form analytical model validated by experiments on Raspberry Pi hardware using an IOTA Tangle for DID resolution. The results demonstrate feasibility and reveal a trade-off between security/decoupled identity management and handshake latency, guiding future optimizations in DLT resolution and revocation checks for practical IoT deployments.

Abstract

The centralized PKI is not a suitable solution to provide identities in large-scale IoT systems. The main problem is the high cost of managing X.509 certificates throughout their lifecycle, from installation to regular updates and revocation. The Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is a decentralised option that reduces the need for human intervention, and therefore has the potential to significantly reduce the complexity and cost associated to identity management in large-scale IoT systems. However, to leverage the full potential of SSI, the authentication of IoT nodes needs to be moved from the application to the Transport Layer Security (TLS) level. This paper contributes to the adoption of SSI in large-scale IoT systems by addressing, for the first time, the extension of the original TLS 1.3 handshake to support two new SSI authentication modes while maintaining the interoperability with nodes implementing the original handshake protocol. The open source implementation of the new TLS 1.3 handshake protocol in OpenSSL is used to experimentally prove the feasibility of the approach.

On the Integration of Self-Sovereign Identity with TLS 1.3 Handshake to Build Trust in IoT Systems

TL;DR

This work tackles the high cost and centralization of PKI for large-scale IoT by integrating Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) into the TLS 1.3 handshake. It introduces two SSI authentication modes—Verifiable Credentials (VC) and Decentralized Identifiers (DID)—and a hybrid fallback to preserve interoperability with X.509. The authors design new TLS extensions and messages, implement them in an OpenSSL provider, and develop a closed-form analytical model validated by experiments on Raspberry Pi hardware using an IOTA Tangle for DID resolution. The results demonstrate feasibility and reveal a trade-off between security/decoupled identity management and handshake latency, guiding future optimizations in DLT resolution and revocation checks for practical IoT deployments.

Abstract

The centralized PKI is not a suitable solution to provide identities in large-scale IoT systems. The main problem is the high cost of managing X.509 certificates throughout their lifecycle, from installation to regular updates and revocation. The Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is a decentralised option that reduces the need for human intervention, and therefore has the potential to significantly reduce the complexity and cost associated to identity management in large-scale IoT systems. However, to leverage the full potential of SSI, the authentication of IoT nodes needs to be moved from the application to the Transport Layer Security (TLS) level. This paper contributes to the adoption of SSI in large-scale IoT systems by addressing, for the first time, the extension of the original TLS 1.3 handshake to support two new SSI authentication modes while maintaining the interoperability with nodes implementing the original handshake protocol. The open source implementation of the new TLS 1.3 handshake protocol in OpenSSL is used to experimentally prove the feasibility of the approach.
Paper Structure (28 sections, 8 equations, 5 figures, 5 tables)

This paper contains 28 sections, 8 equations, 5 figures, 5 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI)
  3. Transport Layer Security (TLS)
  4. Original handshake
  5. SSI handshake
  6. Hybrid handshake
  7. Fallback mechanism
  8. Detailed Design of the SSI Handshake
  9. Extensions
  10. ssi_parameters
  11. signature algorithms
  12. Messages
  13. SSIRequest
  14. VC
  15. DIDVerify
  16. ...and 13 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: Message flow in (a) the original TLS 1.3 handshake protocol and (b) the SSI TLS 1.3 handshake protocol.
  • Figure 2: Hybrid TLS 1.3 handshakes with (a) original client and SSI server and (b) SSI client and original server.
  • Figure 3: Experimental setup
  • Figure 4: (a) Experimental difference between the unilaterally authenticated handshake latency with VC and X.509 authentication modes and ECDSA signature algorithm, (b) Overlay of experimental values and model estimates.
  • Figure 5: (a) Experimental difference between the mutually authenticated handshake latency with VC and X.509 authentication modes and ECDSA signature algorithm, (b) Overlay of experimental values and model estimates.