Scalable Lightweight Blockchain-Based Authentication Mechanism for Secure VoIP Communication

Currently, the world is experiencing a global pandemic due to the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a disease stemming from a novel coronavirus. The main measure used to contain the rapid spread and to control this virus’s contamination rate is social distancing. This method has dramatically affected citizens’ daily lives. To this end, replacing face-to-face meetings with virtual meetings using cloud videoconferencing application solutions has emerged. This approach has indeed solved this problem for millions of schools, companies, governments, and individuals worldwide. However, security and privacy concerns arise. The number of videoconferencing users has increased during the pandemic, yet some applications offer only unencrypted communication for unpaid users. Moreover, uninvited attendees can join virtual meetings, collect sensitive information about users and shared files, and participate in them using deepfake tools. To resolve this dilemma, we propose in this paper a lightweight, scalable blockchain-based authentication mechanism to secure cloud videoconferencing. Private blockchain, as a decentralized network, can handle user authentication and provide complete data privacy to shared information in a virtual meeting. Moreover, to reduce the latency and mining processing overhead and for scalability of the system, we use a time-based consensus algorithm.