Anonymous Blockchain-Assisted Authentication Protocols for Secure Cross-Domain IoD Communications

Due to its diverse and promising use cases, including civilian, military, and commercial, the Internet of Drones (IoD) has quickly become a hot issue in academic and industry circles. Concerns about drone privacy and security are also growing at the same rate. Drones from different flying zones frequently work together in the IoD to accomplish the same mission, necessitating the development of trust among untrusted domains. Recently, some researchers have used blockchain in their authentication scheme to establish trust across different domains. However, the integration led to significant communication, computation and storage overheads and the loss of crucial security features like anonymity or unlinkability. To address these concerns, we develop a cost-effective key exchange protocol for cross-domain IoD communications through the judicious use of the blockchain. Specifically, we employ Chebyshev's chaotic map as the crypto-system, and the ledger keeps only the public keys of the drones, resulting in a significant decrease in storage and computation overheads. The proposed protocol not only complies with the stringent Canetti and Krawczyk adversary model but also satisfies the essential security requirements for IoD, such as anonymity and unlinkability. Using informal justification, formal proof, and automated security reasoning in addition to a comparative performance evaluation, this research substantiates its claims.