A highly reliable cross-domain identity authentication protocol based on blockchain in edge computing environment

Aiming at the urgent need for a cross-domain authentication scheme with low computational cost, low latency, and high security in the edge computing environment, this paper proposes a blockchain-based cross-domain authentication protocol. In this protocol, the IoT devices in the edge computing environment themselves control the generation, encrypted storage, registration, use or cancellation of their identities, and the authenticity and credibility of these identities can be guaranteed through a trusted identity checking mechanism. The public information of these identities is shared among edge nodes of different domains using the consensus mechanism of blockchain. IoT devices can perform cross-domain authentication at the edge. The authentication process not only makes use of the advantages of low latency of edge computing, but also minimizes the disclosure of detailed identity information. Security analysis shows that the protocol can resist common attacks such as DDoS Attacks and Impersonation Attacks. Compared with several previous cross-domain authentication schemes, our protocol is more secure. Besides, this protocol has the advantage of low computational cost, suitable for low-performance IoT devices.