Xyreum: A High-Performance and Scalable Blockchain for IIoT Security and Privacy

Abstract

As cyber attacks to Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) remain a major challenge, blockchain has emerged as a promising technology for IIoT security due to its decentralization and immutability characteristics. Existing blockchain designs, however, introduce high computational complexity and latency challenges which are unsuitable for IIoT. This paper proposes Xyreum, a new high-performance and scalable blockchain for enhanced IIoT security and privacy. Xyreum uses a Time-based Zero-Knowledge Proof of Knowledge (T-ZKPK) with authenticated encryption to perform Mutual Multi-Factor Authentication (MMFA). T-ZKPK properties are also used to support Key Establishment (KE) for securing transactions. Our approach for reaching consensus, which is a blockchain group decision-making process, is based on lightweight cryptographic algorithms. We evaluate our scheme with respect to security, privacy, and performance, and the results show that, compared with existing relevant blockchain solutions, our scheme is secure, privacy-preserving, and achieves a significant decrease in computation complexity and latency performance with high scalability. Furthermore, we explain how to use our scheme to strengthen the security of the REMME protocol, a blockchain-based security protocol deployed in several application domains.