Digital Certificates for the Internet of Things

Abstract: This thesis will investigate the possibility of developing a lightweight digitalcertificate solution for resource constrained embedded systems in 6LoWPANnetworks. Such systems are battery powered or energy harvesting devices whereit is crucial that energy consumption and memory footprints are as minimalas possible. Current solutions for digital certificates are found to be moredemanding than what is desirable and therefore an issue that needs to besolved.The solution that is proposed in this thesis is a profile for the X.509 cer-tificate standard for use with constrained devices and the Internet of Things(IoT). Furthermore, a compression mechanism is designed and implementedfor certificates following this X.509 profile.Results show that compressing certificates is a highly viable solution, de-spite the added complexity it brings.This new lightweight digital certificate solution will allow resource con-strained systems to be able to run for longer without being interrupted orneeding maintenance.