A Decentralised Blockchain-Based Secure Authentication Scheme for IoT Devices

Internet of things (IoT) is a paradigm comprising smart and embedded devices that communicate with each other over communication channels. As the connectivity is mostly through vulnerable channels, these devices may have authentication issues. With the exponential growth in the number of IoT devices in the market, alongside exposed vulnerabilities of constantly improving technology, the adversary has found numerous ways to pose a threat to the IoT communication channel. Authentication is essential in order to ensure the security of IoT, comprising identification of both users and devices. The reliance on single servers and centralised authorities for network-wide registration and authentication of IoT devices exposes current authentication schemes to adversarial threats. We present a blockchain-based decentralised authentication scheme for peer-to-peer IoT networks. The scheme is designed to foster secure authentication for IoT devices in an integrated IoT-cloud network topology.