SafeCom: Robust mutual authentication and session key sharing protocol for underwater wireless sensor networks

Waterways are used to monitor a variety of incredible occurrences that occur in an underwater environment, such as weather impact surveillance, aquatic life, natural resource surveys, defense activities, and so on. The underwater network and its components are vulnerable to numerous attacks since they are employed to evaluate oceanographic content gathering and future forecasts. Several protocols have been offered to combat these attacks. However, they have all proven ineffective. This study considers an underwater wireless sensor network architecture and designs an authentication technique that establishes a session key for safe communication. Our protocol’s security study reveals that it protects against a wide range of serious security threats. We used Scyther Simulator to test security threats and found that the protocol is entirely secure. The suggested protocol’s performance is assessed in terms of security features, computation, and communication cost and found to be satisfactory, competing with other relevant works.