Fog computing is an emerging computing paradigm which expands cloud-based computing services near the network edge. With this new computing paradigm, new challenges arise in terms of security and privacy. These concerns are due to the distributed ownership of Fog devices. Because of the large scale distributed nature of devices at the Fog layer, secure authentication for communication among these devices is a major challenge. The traditional authentication methods (password-based, certificate-based and biometric-based) are not directly applicable due to the unique architecture and characteristics of the Fog. Moreover, the traditional authentication methods consume significantly more computation power and incur high latency, and this does not meet the key requirements of the Fog. To fill this gap, this article proposes a secure decentralised location-based device to device (D2D) authentication model in which Fog devices can mutually authenticate each other at the Fog layer by using Blockchain. We considered an Ethereum Blockchain platform for the Fog device registration, authentication, attestation and data storage. We presented the overall system architecture, various participants and their transactions and message interaction between the participants. We validated the proposed model by comparing it with the existing method; results showed that the proposed authentication mechanism was efficient and secure. From the performance evaluation, it was found that the proposed method is computationally efficient and secure in a highly distributed Fog network.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	fog computing, security and privacy, authentication, device-to-device communication, blockchain, digital identity, location management
Research Division:	Information and Computing Sciences
Research Group:	Distributed computing and systems software
Research Field:	Distributed systems and algorithms
Objective Division:	Information and Communication Services
Objective Group:	Information systems, technologies and services
Objective Field:	Computer systems
UTAS Author:	Battula, SK (Mr Sudheer Kumar Battula)
UTAS Author:	Naha, RK (Mr Ranesh Kumar Naha)
UTAS Author:	Garg, S (Dr Saurabh Garg)
ID Code:	142776
Year Published:	2020
Web of Science® Times Cited:	23
Deposited By:	Information and Communication Technology
Deposited On:	2021-02-11
Last Modified:	2021-05-31
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