116 Int. J. Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 29, Nos. 1/2, 2018 Copyright © 2018 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Security scheme for mobility management in the internet of things Oryema Brian KNU-LG Electronics Convergence Research Center, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehakro, Bukgu, Daegu, 41566, South Korea Email: boryema@knu.ac.kr Seung Man Chun Gyeongbuk Institute of IT Convergence Industry Technology, Gyeongbuk 38463, South Korea Email: smchun@gitc.or.kr Cheol Woo Jung and Jong Tae Park* School of Electronics Engineering, Kyungpook National University, 80 Daehakro, Bukgu, Daegu, 41566, South Korea Email: cwjeong@ee.knu.ac.kr Email: jtpark@ee.knu.ac.kr *Corresponding author Abstract: A mobility management protocol based on the constrained application protocol (CoAP), called the CoAP-based mobility management protocol (CoMP), was suggested to counteract the constraints of mobile internet protocol version 6 (MIPv6) in the Internet of Things (IoT) environment. CoMP exchanges Binding Update (BU) messages to manage location changes, but BU messages are subject to security vulnerabilities, such as denial of service (DoS), false BU, session hijacking, and man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks. In this paper, we extend CoMP by proposing a security scheme based on a private key to protect the BU CoMP messages exchanged between the mobile nodes and clients, referred to as private key-based BU for CoMP (PKBU-CoMP). PKBU-CoMP ensures that mobile nodes check and confirm the address ownership and validity of mobile nodes before performing any BU operation. The performance of PKBU-CoMP is analysed both mathematically and using Cooja simulations. Keywords: security in internet of things; secure mobility; secure binding; private key in IoT. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Brian, O., Chun, S.M., Jung, C.W. and Park, J.T. (2018) ‘Security scheme for mobility management in the internet of things’, Int. J. Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 29, Nos. 1/2, pp.116–128. Biographical notes: Oryema Brian attained his MS in Electronics Engineering from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea in 2017. He has a passion for research with interest including mobility management, internet of things, artificial intelligence. Currently he is working as a Research Engineer in the field of Artificial Intelligence at KNU-LG-Electronics Convergence Research Center, South Korea. Seung Man Chun received his MS and PhD in Electronic Engineering from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea, in 2010 and 2014. He is currently working in Gyeongbuk Institute of IT Convergence Industry Technology. He has published more than 40 journals and papers in the areas of computer communication networks, IoT network management. His research interest includes mobility management, IoT Healthcare Network. In particular, he has been working on IoT network management mobility in Smart Farm and Smart Factory. Cheol Woo Jung received his BS in the Department of Computer Engineering from Daegu Hanny Unisersity, South Korea, and currently pursuing a MS from School of Electronics Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea. His research interests include the artificial intelligence, mobility management and internet of things.