Secure authentication protocol for IoT applications based on blockchain technology

Abstract

The lack of security in Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure across different applications has attracted the attention of researchers to work on IoT security issues. The paper presents a scenario where blockchain technology is combined with IoT to provide a decentralized security mechanism. Secure authentication and Key-Agreement technique are proposed for IoT nodes and peers to ensure proper authorization before communication can take place. The proposed protocol uses public key cryptography to generate a shared symmetric key for mutual authentication and two-party conversation. The protocol was tested using Scyther and was found to be robust enough to withstand all known authentication-related attacks, including replay, and typing attacks. Hyperledger, a blockchain technology, was employed to provide a more efficient IoT-enabled infrastructure for the scalability of IoT devices on the network. The proposed technique provides a secure and scalable system for device authentication in a blockchain-enabled IoT environment.