Towards A Lightweight Identity Management and Secure Authentication for IoT Using Blockchain

Handling nodes identities and authentication is one of the current critical security challenges in an Internet of Things (IoT) environment, which consists of numerous devices with limited computation, communication, storage, and power capabilities. Motivated by the need to maintain trustworthiness in IoT networks to secure node-to-node or user-to-node communication, a blockchain-based identity management and secure authentication mechanism for a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) scenario is proposed in this paper. The considered WSN is assumed to have three types of nodes: base station, cluster heads, and monitor nodes. The WSN is connected through the base station to the IoT cloud. The proposed system employs a private blockchain for internal authentication of cluster heads and monitor nodes, while a public blockchain is deployed between the base station and the IoT cloud to authenticate communication across different WSNs and end-users. Furthermore, a machine learning-based detection module is utilized to mitigate possible denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that may target cluster head nodes, raising the registration and authentication costs for monitor nodes within its vicinity and amplifying other blockchain attacks.