A New Identity Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol Based on Multi-Layer Blockchain in Edge Computing

In today’s interconnected world, identity authentication and key agreement are important links in the secure communication process of IoT terminal devices. In the edge computing environment, with the frequent cross-domain authentication and data sharing of IoT devices in different security domains, identity authentication faces a series of challenges and security issues. Most of the traditional identity authentication methods are based on public key infrastructure, which is prone to single point of failure and is not applicable to the distributed architecture of edge computing. In this article, we apply blockchain technology to the identity authentication and key agreement process of IoT terminal devices. In order to meet cross-domain requests from terminal devices in different security domains, a multi-layer blockchain authentication architecture is designed. The hash value of the digital certificate is stored on the blockchain and combined with dynamic accumulator technology to enhance the reliability and authentication efficiency of the digital certificate. Security analysis and experimental results demonstrate that our scheme can achieve efficient and secure authentication and key agreement.