A Blockchain-Based Authentication Scheme and Secure Architecture for IoT-Enabled Maritime Transportation Systems

Although modern Maritime Transportation Systems (MTS) have been extensively benefited from Internet of Things (IoT) technology, but still the risks and challenges in safety and reliability have increased substantially. The involvement of different maritime parties in the marine transportation flow scheduling and management further escalates these challenges. Thus, we need an IoT-based collaborative processing system that unifies the modular structure and integrates multiple modules involved in MTS. Moreover, the need for a shared and controlled access mechanism that cannot be manipulated or tampered by unauthorized parties is also essential requirement in MTS. Blockchain, as an emerging technology, has become a key tool in data security protection because of its non-tampering and non-forgery characteristics. Keeping in view of this aspect, in this paper, an IoT-based collaborative processing system based on blockchain is proposed for marine transportation flow scheduling and management. In addition, we propose a novel consensus mechanism based on Verifiable Random Function (VRF) and reputation voting to reduce the communication cost in blockchain consensus communication process. The proposed scheme has been validated in a simulated environment and the results illustrate that the scheme has obvious effect in resisting replay attack and camouflage attack. Furthermore, the optimized consensus mechanism improves the security by 8% and the transaction processing speed by 6% on the premise that the communication cost is basically unchanged.