BACP-IeFC: designing blockchain-based access control protocol in IoT-enabled fog computing environment

The increasing number of edge layer devices connected to fog servers in fog computing environments has led to a rise in vulnerable and unauthorized actions. Implementing authorized access control with secure key management is essential to address this issue. As the traditional key management methods rely on third-party involvement, which suffers from drawbacks such as single points of failure and inconsistent key management in centralized architecture, so establishing efficient and secure key management between edge devices while ensuring effective access control is the main challenge in the digital environment. This study introduces a novel Blockchain-Based Access Control Protocol in IoT-Enabled Fog Computing (BACP-IeFC) environment for intra-network, inter-network, and mobile device communication models. The BACP-IeFC protocol eliminates the necessity for third-party intermediaries by leveraging Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) for secure data sharing and hash chains for key pair generation. The BACP-IeFC protocol utilizes session keys generated by fog servers, which are securely recorded on a blockchain, ensuring robust authentication at edge devices. A Permissioned Blockchain is also used for secure key storage at the fog layer. The BACP-IeFC security has undergone comprehensive evaluation, including testing its session key (SK) security under the Real-or-Random (ROR) model, confirming its effectiveness in achieving SK security. An informal security analysis confirms the BACP-IeFC protocol resilience against known attacks. For the formal security verification, the BACP-IeFC protocol utilized the ProVerif security tool, and the results show that it is secure against major attacks. Additionally, the performance analysis of the proposed protocol using MIRACL shows a significant improvement in computation overhead, communication, storage cost, and energy consumption cost compared to existing protocols. The scalability and latency analysis of the BACP-IeFC protocol demonstrates that it supports high scalability with low latency costs. The BACP-IeFC protocol is implemented on Truffle Blockchain using Ethereum 2.0, and a lightweight Proof of Authority (PoA) consensus algorithm demonstrates that the BACP-IeFC protocol significantly outperformed existing protocols in terms of average response time for edge device registration time, authentication time, and block preparation time.