Blockchain-Enabled Distributed Authentication Mechanism for Industrial Device Access

The secure access of numerous heterogeneous devices ensures the stability of the industrial Internet of Things. Centralized authentication can be overwhelmed by an influx of authentication requests from malicious devices. Distributed device-to-device authentication is vulnerable to tampering attack evidence. Blockchain authentication eases evidence tampering, but traditional blockchains impose high-performance requirements on devices, rendering them unsuitable for resource-limited devices. Therefore, in this article, we apply IOTA to device access authentication. To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first application. Based on this, we propose a blockchain-enabled distributed authentication mechanism for industrial device access. The authentication involves a consensus phase based on optimized IOTA and a unique identification code validation phase. We optimized the tip selection algorithm of IOTA to make it faster and more stable. The performance experiment results demonstrate that our mechanism meets the time-consuming requirements of device access. The security experiments indicate that the authentication phases effectively intercept the attacks.