Blockchain-Based Multistage Continuous Authentication for Smart Devices

With the increasing connectivity between multiple smart devices in the Internet of Vehicles, privacy and security have become stringent threats due to unauthorized access. To overcome this issue, designing continuous authentication systems has become an important research topic because of the advantages of continuous monitoring of users after the initial access to the smart devices. Unfortunately, the existing systems are based on a third-party centralized structure, and most of them suffer storage pressure on equipment, thus resulting in significant security hazards and limited performance. In this paper, we propose a multistage continuous authentication system based on blockchain technology and the IPFS, which achieves decentralization and reduces storage pressure. In the first stage of authentication, we adopt Hyperledger Fabric to implement the underlying technical architecture of the blockchain to enhance the security and reliability of identity parameters. The preoutputs of the first-stage authentication are compared against behavioral biometric characteristics stored in the IPFS that aim to accomplish the final authentication. In particular, we use fuzzy extractors to deal with behavioral biometric feature templates, thus solving the privacy problem caused by user information leakage. To evaluate the security of our system, we prove the correctness of the communication protocol and two-way authentication of the scheme using BAN Logic. Furthermore, we use Hyperledger Caliper to analyze the impact of the sending rate of authentication requests on various performance parameters such as throughput, memory, and CPU utilization of the authentication system. Security and experimental results show that: (i) We solve the problem of centralized authentication and can resist replay attacks. (ii) Our scheme can maintain high throughput and effectively reach consensus. Compared to related works, the throughput is improved by 8.6%.