Blockchain-Assisted Secure Intra/Inter-Domain Authorization and Authentication for Internet of Things

Abstract

Multidomain Internet of Things (IoT) is faced with serious domain interoperability (DI) and compatibility issues since different intradomain authorization and authentication (A&A) mechanisms are deployed without the consideration of interdomain A&A. This article proposes a blockchain-assisted scheme to achieve flexible intra- and inter-domain A&A simultaneously and seamlessly. Specifically, we first design a contract-based mutual access control agreement on top of a consortium blockchain, where domain managers can manage their access permission without any trusted parties. Based on the agreement, a secure and privacy-preserving authentication protocol is further proposed by tailoring one-out-of-many proof techniques, which enables IoT devices to anonymously access authorized IoT domains. We additionally design a voting-based protocol by using a threshold-based cryptosystem. The protocol allows domain managers to transparently audit resource access with the assistance of the blockchain. Detailed security analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme achieves the security properties, such as DI, privacy protection, and accountability. Finally, we develop two proof-of-concept prototypes in a physical testbed and virtual machine, respectively, based on an open-source blockchain platform to show our scheme’s efficiency in terms of computation and communication overhead.