Open Access

ARTICLE

A Blockchain-Based Authentication Protocol for WLAN Mesh Security Access

Xin Jiang¹, Mingzhe Liu^1,*, Chen Yang¹, Yanhua Liu¹, Ruili Wang²
1 State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection, Chengdu University of Technology, Sichuan, China.
2 Institute of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand .
* Corresponding Author: Mingzhe Liu. Email: .

Computers, Materials & Continua 2019, 58(1), 45-59. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2019.03863

Abstract

In order to deploy a secure WLAN mesh network, authentication of both users and APs is needed, and a secure authentication mechanism should be employed. However, some additional configurations of trusted third party agencies are still needed on-site to deploy a secure authentication system. This paper proposes a new block chain-based authentication protocol for WLAN mesh security access, to reduce the deployment costs and resolve the issues of requiring key delivery and central server during IEEE 802.11X authentication. This method takes the user’s authentication request as a transaction, considers all the authentication records in the mesh network as the public ledger and realizes the effective monitoring of the malicious attack. Finally, this paper analyzes the security of the protocol in detail, and proves that the new method can solve the dependence of the authentication node on PKI and CA.

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Keywords

WLAN mesh, block chain, authentication protocol, public ledger.

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Citations