The research topics of this paper are the data security of the edge devices and terminals of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the consensus design of a lightweight blockchain for the Internet of Things. These devices have self-organization capabilities to overcome the bandwidth delay and service-congestion problems caused by excessive concentration in existing scenarios, but they face the challenges of limited computing, storage, and communication resources. As a result, a non- financial lightweight blockchain consensus design with low energy consumption, low latency, and greater stability should be investigated. We propose a hierarchical proof-of-capability (HPoC) consensus mechanism combined with the asynchronous proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism for improving the computing capacity, storage capacity, and communication capacity of IoT edge devices that can generate blocks with low latency, low power consumption, and strong stability in resource-constrained edge device nodes, while ensuring that the security of the edge devices is enhanced asynchronously. We simulated a smart-home scenario, with the number of device nodes ranging from 15 to 75, and conducted comparative experiments between HPoC and PoW based on different difficulty bits. The experimental results showed that HPoC is a consensus mechanism with scalability and stability that can flexibly adjust time consumption and accurately select nodes with strong capabilities to generate blocks in heterogeneous devices.
Nowadays Electronic Health Care System is growing to a large extent. As data retrieve from IoT devices, that data is needed to store in a database as the different patients have different data. Due to a lack of intrinsic security safeguards, the Internet of Things is prone to privacy and security breaches. The information gathered from IoT devices is mostly saved in a database This data is very important for a particular patient. If this data is altered by any intruder, then the doctor cannot find the actual problem of the patient and also cannot give the patient proper treatment, as a result, it causes great harm to the patient. As a result, a security mechanism for the data contained in the database is required. Blockchain technology will help a lot in this situation. We make an IoT-based prototype that uses Blockchain technology to get rid of this anonymous data access, in the common word patient's data are private through this system.
Ezedin Barka, Mohammed Al Baqari, Chaker Abdelaziz Kerrache, Jorge Herrera-Tapia
The use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems has emerged with the continuous advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart devices. This is driven by the various advantages for both patients and healthcare providers, including timely and distant alerts, continuous control, and reduced cost, to name a few. However, while providing these advantages, various challenges involving heterogeneity, scalability, and network complexity are still open. Patient security, data privacy, and trust are also among the main challenges that need more research effort. To this end, this paper presents an implementation of a biometric-based blockchain EHR system (BBEHR), a prototype that uniquely identifies patients, enables them to control access to their EHRs, and ensures recoverable access to their EHRs. This approach overcomes the dependency on the private/public key approach used by most blockchain technologies to identify patients, which becomes more crucial in situations where a loss of the private key permanently hinders the ability to access patients’ EHRs. Our solution covers component selection, high-level implementation, and integration of subsystems, was well as the coding of a prototype to validate the mitigation of the risk of permanent loss of access to EHRs by using patients’ fingerprints. A performance analysis of BBEHR showed our system’s robustness and effectiveness in identifying patients and ensuring access control for their EHRs by using blockchain smart contracts with no additional overhead.
Jiaqi Wang, Ning Lu, Ziyang Gong, Wenbo Shi · 5 authors
With the arrival of the 5G era, wireless communication technologies and services are rapidly exhausting the limited spectrum resources. Spectrum auctions came into being, which can effectively utilize spectrum resources. Because of the complexity of the electronic spectrum auction network environment, the security of spectrum auction can not be guaranteed. Most scholars focus on researching the security of the single-sided auctions, while ignoring the practical scenario of a secure double spectrum auction where participants are composed of multiple sellers and buyers. Researchers begin to design the secure double spectrum auction mechanisms, in which two semi-honest agents are introduced to finish the spectrum auction rules. But these two agents may collude with each other or be bribed by buyers and sellers, which may create security risks, therefore, a secure double spectrum auction is proposed in this paper. Unlike traditional secure double spectrum auctions, the spectrum auction server with Software Guard Extensions (SGX) component is used in this paper, which is an Ethereum blockchain platform that performs spectrum auctions. A secure double spectrum protocol is also designed, using SGX technology and cryptographic tools such as Paillier cryptosystem, stealth address technology and one-time ring signatures to well protect the private information of spectrum auctions. In addition, the smart contracts provided by the Ethereum blockchain platform are executed to assist offline verification, and to verify important spectrum auction information to ensure the fairness and impartiality of spectrum auctions. Finally, security analysis and performance evaluation of our protocol are discussed.
The proliferation of resource-constrained devices has become prevalent across various digital applications, including smart homes, smart healthcare, and smart transportation, among others. However, the integration of these devices brings many security issues. To address these concerns, Blockchain technology has been widely adopted due to its robust security characteristics, including immutability, cryptography, and distributed consensus. However, implementing blockchain within these networks is highly challenging due to the limited resources of the employed devices and the resource-intensive requirements of the blockchain. To overcome these challenges, a multitude of researchers have proposed lightweight blockchain solutions specifically designed for resource-constrained networks. In this paper, we present a taxonomy of lightweight blockchain solutions proposed in the literature. More precisely, we identify five areas within the "lightweight" concept, namely, blockchain architecture, device authentication, cryptography model, consensus algorithm, and storage method. We discuss the various methods employed in each "lightweight" category, highlighting existing gaps and identifying areas for improvement. Our review highlights the missing points in existing systems and paves the way to building a complete lightweight blockchain solution for networks of resource-constrained devices.
The Internet of Things (IoT) can provide intelligent and effective solutions to various applications with higher accuracy that requires less or no human intervention. Smart Cities are one of the significant applications of the IoT comprising a collection of various services such as intelligent transportation, waste management, smart homes, etc. These heterogeneous services offer a wide range of collaborative applications in smart cities. A smart municipality in a smart city is a concept in which a digital municipal corporation is developed to provide comprehensive local government collaboration services based on digitization and automation aiming towards raising the living standards of citizens. Interoperability between heterogeneous services for collaborative tasks creates challenges for data security and privacy. Ensuring integrity and confidentiality of information is critical, and reliable data is essential to both the government and its citizens. In this paper, we proposed a service security architecture based on authentication and authorization for constrained environments during collaborative tasks for Software Defined Networking (SDN) and smart contract-enabled municipal smart cities. The proposed collaborative service security framework is being tested on the Multichain Blockchain networks. We present a novel method for using smart contracts in multichain blockchains for data security during collaborative tasks in smart city municipal architecture. The proposed security solution is based on the dynamism of smart contracts to govern and control all interactions and transactions securely between different heterogeneous IoT networks. We implemented a supportive use case for collaborative services in an SDN-enabled IoT architecture to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed service security architecture.
Dounia Marbouh, Mecit Can Emre Simsekler, Khaled Salah, Raja Jayaraman · 5 authors
Mobile health (mHealth) is playing a key role in facilitating health services for patients. Such services may include remote diagnostics and monitoring, chronic conditions management, preventive medicine, and health promotion. While mHealth has gained significant traction during the COVID-19 pandemic, they may pose safety risks to patients. This entails regulations and monitoring of shared data and management of potential safety risks of all mHealth applications continuously and systematically. In this study, we propose a blockchain-based framework for regulating mHealth apps and governing their safe use. We systematically identify the needs, stakeholders, and requirements of the current mHealth practices and regulations that may benefit from blockchain features. Further, we exemplify our framework on a diabetes mHealth app that supports safety risk assessment and incident reporting functions. Blockchain technology can offer a solution to achieve this goal by providing improved security, transparency, accountability, and traceability of data among stakeholders. Blockchain has the potential to alleviate existing mHealth problems related to data centralization, poor data quality, lack of trust, and the absence of robust governance. In the paper, we present a discussion on the security aspects of our proposed blockchain-based framework, including limitations and challenges.
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in incorporating blockchain for the Internet of Things (IoT) to address the inherent issues of IoT, such as single point of failure and data silos. However, blockchain alone cannot ascertain the authenticity and veracity of the data coming from IoT devices. The append-only nature of blockchain exacerbates this issue, as it would not be possible to alter the data once recorded on-chain. Trust and Reputation Management (TRM) is an effective approach to overcome the aforementioned trust issues. However, designing TRM frameworks for blockchain-enabled IoT applications is a non-trivial task, as each application has its unique trust challenges with their unique features and requirements. In this paper, we present our experiences in designing TRM framework for various blockchain-enabled IoT applications to provide insights and highlight open research challenges for future opportunities.
This paper presents a new hybrid approach that is suitable for application to energy smart meter gateways, based on combining both blockchain and Secure Element (SE) technologies serving the roles of a secure distributed data storage system and an essential component for building a "root of trust" in IoT platforms simultaneously. Blockchain technology alone may not completely secure a transaction because it only guarantees data immutability, while in most cases, the data has to be also secured at the point of generation. The proposed combinational approach aims to build a robust root of trust by introducing the SE, which will provide IoT devices with trusted computed resources. The feasibility of the proposed method is validated by testing three different implementation scenarios, using different Secure Element systems (SES) combined with blockchain and LPWAN communication technologies to encrypt, transmit, and save data. This hybrid approach aids in overcoming the obstructions of using any one technology alone, and its use is demonstrated with a case study for an Energy Smart Metering gateway that enables the implementation of a local Peer to Peer energy trading scheme that is end-to-end secure and decentralized.
Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of smart devices that can communicate with each other without or with little human interaction. Maintaining security and trust among these millions of smart devices is a big concern because the transportation of their information generally takes place over the Internet. Limited resources available in IoT devices makes it more difficult to apply conventional security protocols. Moreover, IoT devices are generally located in such remote areas where unethical means can easily not only access them and inject false data but also completely replace them. This physical access can make other devices vulnerable to different attacks, so trust among these IoT devices is a critical factor. Trust management can be considered an important factor for a successful IoT system in which smart devices can communicate with one other without worry of security and integrity of data. Trust management is the process of identifying malicious and unwanted nodes or devices and removing them from any communication process. Key parameters of trust management in IoT systems are authentication, authorization/access control, integrity, privacy, and adaptability that depend on some direct measurable and non-measurable factors. However, despite numerous security solutions in IoT systems, there are some attacks specially designed by unethical means to manipulate the trust values in trust management systems. These attacks need to be addressed for the proper functioning of trust management systems in the IoT. Blockchain, which is mainly known for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, has proven its effectiveness in data immutability, integrity, and decentralized ledgers and can be a perfect solution for many security and trust-related problems of the IoT. Additionally, advancement in blockchain technology can improve its applicability in securing and managing trust in the IoT. For instance, smart contracts that enable programmability in blockchain can make processing of data conditional and automated. Security features of blockchain, such as authentication, integrity, access control, etc., can be used for managing trust among IoT devices by protecting them from security attacks. Initially, blockchain was designed to be public in nature, where anyone can join and send transactions, and the same data are transparently distributed among all the participants. But in real-world scenarios, we need more control over accessing services. Permissioned blockchain such as Hyperledger Fabric, which is specially designed for business needs can provide more control over the functioning of available services. In Hyperledger Fabric, data are distributed among authorized entities only and all activities are controlled by the admin entity. For authentication, every entity in Hyperledger Fabric has a unique identity provided by some Certification Authority (CA) using X.509 protocols. It also supports smart contracts or chaincodes that provide more control over invoking transactions in its network. This chapter will introduce trust management in IoT systems with its issues and all possible trust-related security attacks on it. It will also discuss important trust parameters that need to be addressed for a successful trust management system. After it, an introduction to blockchain technology with its supported protocols will be explained in this chapter. The evolution of blockchain, its various variants, and applications will also be discussed in the book chapter. The chapter will mainly focus on Hyperledger Fabric, which is a permissioned blockchain, and will define its architecture, security features, and working mechanisms. The chapter will also explain blockchain and IoT integration issues in detail and then expose their solutions with multiple strategies such as the Inter IoT model, IoT blockchain, and the cloud-based IoT blockchain model. Finally, the chapter will describe six important trust management issues in IoT such as “Trust in Authentication,” “Trust in Identity Management,” “Trust in Integrity of Data,” “Trust in Authorization,” “Trust in Interoperabilty,” and “Trust in Privacy.” Thereafter, the chapter will expose their possible solutions using Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain. These solutions will be useful for managing trust in IoT scenarios, as well as for industrial IoT, blockchain, and IoT enthusiasts, students, Ph.D. scholars, and researchers.
Frederick Stock, Yeṣem Kurt Peker, Alfredo J. Pérez, Jarel Hearst
In this work we explore the use of blockchain with Internet of Things (IoT) devices to provide visitor authentication and access control in a physical environment. We propose the use of a “bracelet” based on a low-cost NodeMCU IoT platform that broadcasts visitor location information and cannot be removed without alerting a management system. We present the design, implementation, and testing of our system. Our results show the feasibility of implementing a physical access control system based on blockchain technology, and performance improvements over a similar system proposed in the literature.
Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) can create an agreement that enables stakeholders in the telco world to interact and share services while maintaining trust. As a result, the multiple 6G network stakeholders can perform a role in a marketplace as service providers or consumers. Blockchain and DLT have immutability, transparency, and decentralized ledgers, making them critical in a future-generation network where various administrative domains are controlled by separate operators and resource providers to share resources (virtual network functions, services, or slices). Similarly, an auction-based approach based on the blockchain can eliminate intermediaries while ensuring transparency to increase competitiveness in such an environment. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a solution based on blockchain, considering both approaches (i.e., marketplace and auction). Furthermore, we use IOTA Tangle and IPFS to reduce the transaction and gas costs, which is one of the challenges for Ethereum-based use cases. We also provide experimental evaluations of our use case to analyze the results. It is observed that both options expand the consumer's possibilities to choose, and creating smart contracts adds trust. Moreover, the potential advantages of the proposed solutions are demonstrated through emulation results as a comparison to the traditional ways of doing such agreements between inter-provider domains. We measure transaction latency and the maximum latency observed in our proposed approach is ≈ 25ms. Similarly, the average response time for the Ethereum-based approach is double our proposed approach's average response time. Consequently, the services are completed relatively fast with less latency and faster response time. Moreover, it is observed that in ≈ 2000s, up to 30 services can be completed in a marketplace approach and up to 20 ~ 25 services in the auction. Lastly, the results also explain that by using IOTA-EVM, we can have feeless transactions, and IPFS helps reduce the storage cost up to ≈ 80%.
In recent years, many frameworks and applications have been proposed to ensure tamper resistant data in supply chain using Block chain technologies. Block chain technology as a base design ensures that the content of the information is ‘tamper-resistant’. So far, no other study was presented with a low impact on the environment and minimum cost for each transaction sent by the supply chain. In order to protect the access of malicious user, we tend to propose an immutable data storage environment that is based on Algorand Blockchain. It uses the Pure Proof-of-Stake mechanism of consensus that needs less computational power, and is highly scalable and environmentally sustainable. It will make the data immutable and available in real-time for final consumers. Hence it can tolerate malicious users and achieving consensus without a central authority.
The wearable healthcare equipment is primarily designed to alert patients of any specific health conditions or to act as a useful tool for treatment or follow-up. With the growth of technologies and connectivity, the security of these devices has become a growing concern. The lack of security awareness amongst novice users and the risk of several intermediary attacks for accessing health information severely endangers the use of IoT-enabled healthcare systems. In this paper, a blockchain-based secure data storage system is proposed along with a user authentication and health status prediction system. Firstly, this work utilizes reversed public-private keys combined Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RP2-RSA) algorithm for providing security. Secondly, feature selection is completed by employing the correlation factor-induced salp swarm optimization algorithm (CF-SSOA). Finally, health status classification is performed using advanced weight initialization adapted SignReLU activation function-based artificial neural network (ASR-ANN) which classifies the status as normal and abnormal. Meanwhile, the abnormal measures are stored in the corresponding patient blockchain. Here, blockchain technology is used to store medical data securely for further analysis. The proposed model has achieved an accuracy of 95.893% and is validated by comparing it with other baseline techniques. On the security front, the proposed RP2-RSA attains a 96.123% security level.
We study security-latency bounds for Nakamoto consensus, i.e., how secure a block is after it becomes k-deep in the chain. We improve the state-of-the-art bounds by analyzing the race between adversarial and honest chains in three different phases. We find the probability distribution of the growth of the adversarial chains under models similar to those in Guo and Ren (2022) when a target block becomes k-deep in the chain. We analyze certain properties of this race to model each phase with random walks that provide tighter bounds than the existing results. Combining all three phases provides novel upper and lower bounds for blockchains with small$\lambda \Delta $.
Abstract Due in large part to the Internet of Things’ (IoT) anticipated enormous scope and extensive implementation, achieving safe and private communications on the IoT is difficult. Recent initiatives have investigated the use of blockchain technology to enable decentralized protection and privacy. Such methods, however, are prohibitive for the bulk of IoT applications due to their high computational and time requirements. We specifically offer a resource-efficient, blockchain-based IoT security and privacy solution in this study. The approach is made achievable by utilizing Deep Extreme Learning Machine in combination with unique computational resource exploitation in a typical IoT context (such as smart houses) (DELM). In the proposed method, the privacy, integrity, and accessibility of the Blockchain based Architecture of Smart Homes are prudently considered while assessing the reliability of the system. The overheads caused this strategy are negligible with respect to the security and privacy benefits, we further underline by presenting simulated findings.
Network slicing has gained popularity as a result of the advances in the fifth generation (5G) mobile network. Network slicing facilitates the support of different service types with varying requirements, which brings into light the slicing-aware next generation mobile network architecture. While allowing resource sharing among multiple stakeholders, there is a long list of administrative negotiations among parties that have not established mutual trust. Distributed ledger technology may be a solution to mitigate the above issues by taking its decentralized yet immutable and auditable ledger, which may help to ease administrative negotiations and build mutual trust among multi-stakeholders. There have been many research interests in this direction which focus on handling various problems in network slicing. This paper aims at constructing this area of knowledge by introducing network slice from a standardization point of view to start with, and presenting security, privacy, and trust challenges of network slicing in 5G and beyond networks. Furthermore, this paper covers distributed ledger technologies basics and related approaches that tackle security, privacy, and trust threats in network slicing for 5G and beyond networks. The various proposals proposed in the literature are compared and presented. Lastly, limitations of current work and open challenges are illustrated as well.
With the advancement in computing power and speed, the Internet is being transformed from screen-based information to immersive and extremely low latency communication environments in web 3.0 and the Metaverse. With the emergence of the Metaverse technology, more stringent demands are required in terms of connectivity such as secure access and data privacy. Future technologies such as 6G, Blockchain, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can mitigate some of these challenges. The Metaverse is now on the verge where security and privacy concerns are crucial for the successful adaptation of such disruptive technology. The Metaverse and web 3.0 are to be decentralized, anonymous, and interoperable. Metaverse is the virtual world of Digital Twins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The control and possession of users' data on centralized servers are the cause of numerous security and privacy concerns. This paper proposes a solution for the security and interoperability challenges using Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) integrated with blockchain. The philosophy of Self-Sovereign Identity, where the users are the only holders and owners of their identity, comes in handy to solve the questions of decentralization, trust, and interoperability in the Metaverse. This work also discusses the vision of a single, open standard, trustworthy, and interoperable Metaverse with initial design and implementation of SSI concepts.
Xiujuan Wang, Mengzhen Kang, Hequan Sun, Philippe De Reffye · 5 authors
Briefing: The demand for food is tremendously increasing with the growth of the world population, which necessitates the development of sustainable agriculture under the impact of various factors, such as climate change. To fulfill this challenge, we are developing Metaverses for agriculture, referred to as AgriVerse, under our Decentralized Complex Adaptive Systems in Agriculture (DeCASA) project, which is a digital world of smart villages created alongside the development of Decentralized Sciences (DeSci) and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) for Cyber-Physical-Social Systems (CPSSs). Additionally, we provide the architectures, operating modes and major applications of DeCASA in Agri-Verse. For achieving sustainable agriculture, a foundation model based on ACP theory and federated intelligence is envisaged. Finally, we discuss the challenges and opportunities.
Traditional standards and security protocols are recognized as unable to solve the security, privacy, and availability of services of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) ecosystem, especially during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Blockchain technology has then emerged as a distributed ledger technology that can manage many intelligent transactions and ensure greater security in data management. The Blockchain-based security mechanisms with specific adaptation and additional layers of authentication and verification can offer a complete resources' management system. It has demonstrated it’s superlatively as the core component of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. In this paper, we propose a ThreeTier Blockchain Architecture in a hierarchical clustering network, with a lightweight authentication system-based API Gateway model that provides network and communication security. Reasonable implementation is proposed and the obtained results demonstrate that our approach shows satisfactory performances in terms of transfer time, energy consumption, and CPU impacts. The traffic analysis also shows that the proposed model can meet the requested security, integrity, and confidentiality of user data.
The use of blockchain has received great attention in its adoption as a financial instrument in cryptocurrencies. This phenomenon needs to be considered in the sense not only as a form of financial transactions but also in other fields such as health, which is also a challenge for modern society. In addition, several government policies have also supported the provision of health services as a form of improving people’s living standards in the form of insurance. In this study, we try to design the system by using UML diagram and simulate the use of DApps offered by the Vexanium Ecosystem. For example, three basic activities between patients, doctors, and insurance will be simulated in the form of the transaction ledger. This method allows us to speed up the authentication process that previously needed to be performed for a long time with bureaucracy becoming the rule in smart contracts in a matter of minutes. The evaluation of this method will then be compared with eight existing blockchain projects. The result in healthcare processes is cost savings through increased automation, speed, standardization, and efficiency. All of this can be a preliminary analysis of its application in Indonesia, particularly related to the authentication and recording of medical records.
Hafiz Abid Mahmood Malik, Asghar Ali Shah, AbdulHafeez Muhammad, Ahmad Kananah · 5 authors
The Internet of Things is a system of interconnected smart devices that can communicate with each other and with other devices over the Internet, with or without human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. Although IoT devices, which have IPs, make living easier, they are also a threat to the security and privacy of people. This research work presents a solution to the problem of security in the network of IoT, based on the idea of implementing the blockchain in IoT. Blockchain is a decentralized technology that adds blocks at the end of the chain. It saves the hash value for every block, and corresponds to the previous block. The decentralized behavior of blockchain is best for IoT as an extensive network, because IoT must not have a single point of failure, and one entity must not decide what to do. All the capable storage devices will save the same data entered from any device, removing the risk of receiving altered data.
Miguel Sánchez‐de la Rosa, Carlos Núñez‐Gómez, Blanca Caminero, Carmen Carrión
Summary Fog computing has become a complementary technology to cloud computing and addresses some of the cloud computing threats such as the response time and network bandwidth demand. Fog computing successes processing data and storing data near to the edge, and usually is combined with container virtualization to provide hardware isolation. Empowered by these capabilities, numerous Internet of Things (IoT) applications are developed as virtualized instances on resource‐constrained fog nodes such as single‐board computers (SBC). In addition, blockchain has emerged as a key technology that is transforming the way we share information. Blockchain technology represents a decentralised, distributed, and immutable database ledger and is a potential solution for the distributed ecosystem of IoT applications. The distributed structure of blockchain is naturally suitable for IoT applications. However, it introduces new challenges related to CPU overhead or response time. This paper proposes a layered architecture that integrates blockchain technology and OS‐level virtualization technology to develop fog‐based IoT applications. It also provides insights for future deployments through a proof‐of‐concept use case harnessing SBCs, in this case Raspberry Pi, as blockchain‐enabled fog nodes to drive virtualized IoT applications. The study shows that the maximum CPU overhead added by a permissioned blockchain based on Ethereum on the Raspberry Pi is around a 25% under stress situations while the overhead introduced by the sealer process is negligible. These results support the feasibility of using blockchain on resource‐constrained fog nodes for supporting IoT applications.