ZIADA: Zero Trust-Based Identity Attestation Framework for DLT Verified AI-Enabled Industrial Internet of Things

In Smart Manufacturing Industry 5.0, the advancements in AI-enabled Industrial Internet of Things (AIeIIoTs) are propelled by the converging domain of cognitive intelligence and collaborative-AI. However, AIeIIoTs face formidable challenges in network identity attestation and data privacy. The proposed research introduces - ZIADA, a cryptographically secure identity attestation framework with a novel consensus mechanism for AIeIIoTs to address these security concerns. ZIADA competently eliminates the dependency of conventional attestation mechanisms on insecure Key Generation Center (KGC)-cum-Base Station (BS). It leverages the NIST SP 800–207 ZTA (Zero Trust Architecture) principles and proficiently incorporates ID-based Certificateless-Cryptography (CLC) for mitigating unauthorized access risks. Furthermore, the informal analysis of ZIADA demonstrates its resilience against cloning and impersonation attacks, forward and backward secrecy attacks and pseudo-Base-Station attacks. In comparison to state-of-the-art, ZIADA's downtime in the reconnect phase is almost negligible, henceforth achieving the improvement in reliability. Ultimately, simulation results validate ZIADA's efficiency, demonstrating reduced storage and energy consumption, making it highly suitable for dynamic AIeIIoTs in smart manufacturing ecosystems.