A Keyless Authentication Based on Zero-Knowledge Proof with SDN Link Information to Secure Permissionless P2P Networking

Most trust models are identity based, which how-ever are not appropriate to the permissionless peer-to-peer (P2P) networking since anonymity is a built-in property in the cryptocurrency system (e.g., Bitcoin). Hence, there exists an inherent trade-off between anonymity and trust in the context of permissionless P2P networking system. This paper is motivated to propose a keyless authentication based on zero-knowledge proof. With this, peers can authenticate each other without disclosing any sensitive information. To this end, this approach leverages the software-defined networking (SDN) technique to facilitate the zero-knowledge proof so that the peer's link information can be identified while the proving process will never reveal any identity information. Therefore, the challenge-response exchange can prevent Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks with minimal communication overhead. The experimental results built on the prototype show that this approach is efficient.