Blockchain‐based authentication and secure communication in IoT networks

The application of IoT covers various domains, including smart cities, smart homes, e‐health, autonomous vehicles and so forth. These are powered by IoT networks which consist of a collection of heterogeneous devices. These devices collect and analyze personal data and sometimes make decisions for us. Since IoTs are involved in the decision‐making process, the authenticity and privacy of such networks are critical. In this article, authenticated devices configuration protocol (ADCP) is proposed to handle the authentication and construct a secure overlay network in the existing IoT networks; authenticated device transmission protocol is also proposed to secure the communication within the overlay network. Besides the authentication, ADCP can also mitigate the zero‐day attack and achieve zero the zero‐day attack can also be mitigated and achieved 0 round trip time key exchange. These protocols utilize a distributed blockchain database to store the authentication records optimized for data integrity. These properties guarantee the integrity of the authentication records. Both protocols are compatible with the existing communication protocols and do not require reprogramming the current software. The formal analysis of the proposed scheme has proven its resilience against various possible attacks. In addition, a stochastic threat model is considered and numerical results give solid evidence of security enhancement.