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

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.