DKGAuth: Blockchain-Assisted Distributed Key Generation and Authentication for Cross-Domain Intelligent IoT

The widespread adoption of intelligent Internet of Things (IoT) has sparked increased efforts to foster extensive data interaction and collaboration across diverse fields, leading to a trust crisis in cross-domain scenarios. Moreover, cross-domain collaboration increases the complexity of key management, especially in resource-constrained IoT environments where high computational costs are impractical. This situation poses risks of key leakage and inefficient key updates. This article introduces DKGAuth, a blockchain-based method for distributed key generation and authentication tailored for resource-constrained cross-domain intelligent IoT systems. Initially, we propose a lightweight cross-domain authentication architecture based on blockchain to address the trust crisis effectively among different domains in the intelligent IoT. Second, building upon this architecture, we introduce a distributed key generation method that revolutionizes the key infrastructure to address key management concerns. Additionally, we design an algorithm to combine key factors, minimizing costs associated with both key generation and updates. Finally, we establish a simulation environment to assess the computational, storage, and read/write overheads of our approach. In the same configuration, compared to other solutions, the efficiency of key updates improves by 83% when updated 100 times.