Blockchain-based Authentication Mechanism for Edge Devices in Fog-enabled IoT Networks

Abstract

The deployment of fog computing paradigms for securing IoT networks is associated with several advantages, in-cluding reduced bandwidth, latency, storage, and computational overhead at cloud servers. However, the fog layer has additional security requirements, such as the establishment of secure channels for key distribution and the overhead of repetitive device authentications. In this paper, we have addressed these issues using a permissioned blockchain-based fog network that validates the edge devices through smart contracts by establishing a mechanism for secure storage and exchange of credentials. The communication between edge devices is carried out through the M QTT protocol, and device registration is performed using a smart contract. The key pairs are generated from the secp256kl elliptic curve to ensure faster trust-based identity management and authentication of edge devices and gateways. The proposed frameworks ensures that the access to Blockchain network is given exclusively for authenticated devices The implementation of the proposed scheme is performed on private Ethereum 2.0, and the performance is evaluated in terms of node registration time, authentication time, key generation time, and throughput. The implementation results are available on GitHub(https://github.com/Aswani08/tenconresults.git).