  The rapid development of IoT networks has led to a research trend in
designing effective security features for them. Due to the power-constrained
nature of IoT devices, the security features should remain as lightweight as
possible. Currently, most of the IoT network traffic is unencrypted. The
leakage of smart devices' unencrypted data can come with the significant cost
of a privacy breach. To have a secure channel with encrypted traffic, two
endpoints in a network have to authenticate each other and calculate a
short-term key. They can then communicate through an authenticated and secure
channel. This process is referred to as authenticated key exchange (AKE).
Although Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) offers an AKE protocol for
IoT networks, research has proposed more efficient and case-specific
alternatives. This paper presents LAKEE, a straightforward, lightweight AKE
protocol for IoT networks. Our protocol employs elliptic curve cryptography for
generating a short-term session key. It reduces the communication and
computational overhead of its alternatives while maintaining or improving their
security strength. The simplicity and low overhead of our protocol make it a
fit for a network of constrained devices.
