Blockchain-based DDoS attack mitigation protocol for device-to-device interaction in smart home

Abstract

Smart home devices are vulnerable to a variety of attacks. The matter gets more complicated when a number of devices collaborate to launch a colluding attack (e.g., Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS)) in a network (e.g., Smart home). To handle these attacks, most studies have hitherto proposed authentication protocols that cannot necessarily be implemented in devices, especially during Device-to-Device (D2D) interactions. Tapping into the potential of Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts, this work proposes a lightweight authentication mechanism that enables safe D2D interactions in a smart home. The Ethereum blockchain enables the implementation of a decentralized prototype as well as a peer-to-peer distributed ledger system. The work also uses a single server queuing system model and the authentication mechanism to curtail DDoS attacks by controlling the number of service requests in the system. The simulation was conducted twenty times, each with varying number of devices chosen at random (ranging from 1 to 30). Each requester device sends an arbitrary request with a unique resource requirement at a time. This is done to measure the system's consistency across a variety of device capabilities. The experimental results show that the proposed protocol not only prevents colluding attacks, but also outperforms the benchmark protocols in terms of computational cost, message processing, and response times.