AI-Envisioned Blockchain-Enabled Signature-Based Key Management Scheme for Industrial Cyber–Physical Systems

This article proposes a new blockchain-envisioned key management protocol for artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled industrial cyber–physical systems (ICPSs). The designed key management protocol enables key establishment among the Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled smart devices and their respective gateway nodes. The blocks partially constructed with secure data from smart devices by fog servers are provided to cloud servers that are responsible for completing blocks, and then mining those blocks for verification and addition in the blockchain. The most important application of the private blockchain construction is to apply AI algorithms for accurate predictions in Big data analytics. A detailed security analysis along with formal security verification show that the proposed scheme resists various potential attacks in an ICPS environment. Moreover, practical testbed experiments have been conducted using the multiprecision integer and rational arithmetic cryptographic library (MIRACL). Furthermore, a detailed comparative analysis shows superiority of the proposed scheme over recent relevant schemes. In addition, the practical implementation using the blockchain for the proposed scheme demonstrates the total computational costs when the number of transactions per block and also the number of blocks mined in the blockchain are varied.

I. Introduction

The main focus of the cyber–physical systems (CPSs) is to realize the evolution from “traditional and rigid approaches” into “decentralized structures,” which aims to implement the “Industry 4.0” as well as the “Industrial Internet visions” [1]. Thus, the deployment of CPS in an industrial scenario becomes very crucial aspect and it needs adequate mechanisms for enabling the high readiness of such systems for the “industrial usage.” Several cyber attacks can be mounted by an attacker in the CPS communication layer apart from the threat of failing physical infrastructure. Moreover, in a cloud-based CPS environment, the Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled smart devices, gateway nodes acting as access points, fog, and cloud servers communicate over insecure channels. This poses several potential threats in the Industrial CPS (ICPS) environment, for instance “replay,” “Man-in-The-Middle (MiTM),” “impersonation,” “privileged insider,” “physical smart devices capture,” and “ephemeral secret leakage (ESL)” attacks. This suggests design of a robust security protocol in an ICPS environment.