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Blockchain-assisted authentication and key agreement scheme for fog-based smart grid

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Abstract

In recent times, the research works on the integration of fog computing with blockchain to address the issues such as higher latency, single point of failure, and centralization have expanded considerably. However, only a few works have been done focusing on authentication and key establishment for blockchain-based smart grid (SG) under fog environment. Thus, this paper introduces a mutual authentication and key agreement scheme for blockchain and fog computing based SG environment. Unlike the existing schemes that depend on single trusted authorities for storage and computation tasks, the proposed scheme reduces this dependency by creating a blockchain-based distributed environment assisted by cloud servers and fog nodes. In addition, a secure and shared key is established among smart meter, fog node, and cloud server to achieve message confidentiality between them. A detailed formal and informal security analysis proves that the proposed protocol is secure under the RoR model and achieves the predefined security goals. The blockchain and cryptographic operations are evaluated using hyperledger fabric and cryptographic libraries, respectively. Finally, the performance analysis and comparative study show that the proposed scheme with some additional features is efficient in computational and communication costs.

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Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Notes

  1. “Crypto++ Library 8.4 | Free C++ Class Library of Cryptographic Schemes“, https://www.cryptopp.com/.

  2. “PBC Library—Pairing-Based Cryptography—About“, https://crypto.stanford.edu/pbc/.

  3. “Installing the development environment | Hyperledger Composer“, https://hyperledger.github.io/composer/v0.19/installing/development-tools.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, India

    Ashish Tomar & Sachin Tripathi

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  1. Ashish Tomar
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  2. Sachin Tripathi
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Contributions

Conceptualization: [AT]; Methodology: [AT]; Formal analysis and investigation: [AT]; Writing—original draft preparation: [AT]; Writing—review and editing: [ST]; Supervision: [ST].

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Correspondence to Ashish Tomar.

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Tomar, A., Tripathi, S. Blockchain-assisted authentication and key agreement scheme for fog-based smart grid. Cluster Comput 25, 451–468 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10586-021-03420-2

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