Rechained: Sybil-Resistant Distributed Identities for the Internet of Things and Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.

Benjamin Leiding,Arne Bochem

doi:10.3390/s21093257

Abstract

Today, increasing Internet of Things devices are deployed, and the field of applications for decentralized, self-organizing networks keeps growing. The growth also makes these systems more attractive to attackers. Sybil attacks are a common issue, especially in decentralized networks and networks that are deployed in scenarios with irregular or unreliable Internet connectivity. The lack of a central authority that can be contacted at any time allows attackers to introduce arbitrary amounts of nodes into the network and manipulate its behavior according to the attacker’s goals, by posing as a majority participant. Depending on the structure of the network, employing Sybil node detection schemes may be difficult, and low powered Internet of Things devices are usually unable to perform impactful amounts of work for proof-of-work based schemes. In this paper, we present Rechained, a scheme that monetarily disincentivizes the creation of Sybil identities for networks that can operate with intermittent or no Internet connectivity. We introduce a new revocation mechanism for identities, tie them into the concepts of self-sovereign identities, and decentralized identifiers. Case-studies are used to discuss upper- and lower-bounds for the costs of Sybil identities and, therefore, the provided security level. Furthermore, we formalize the protocol using Colored Petri Nets to analyze its correctness and suitability. Proof-of-concept implementations are used to evaluate the performance of our scheme on low powered hardware as it might be found in Internet of Things applications.

Highlights

The persistent growth and expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) [1,2], the progressing digitization of our daily life [3,4], and the emergence of complex machine-to-machine, or machine-to-human transaction and interaction scenarios [5], results in a growing popularity of wireless ad hoc networks such as mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) or vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs)
While participants of the Internet of Things should be always connected to the Internet by default, MANETs and their sub-types are often heavily partitioned, with transient connections occurring between nodes due to their mobility, resulting in a constantly changing network topology
Evaluation limitations of the Rechained Colored Petri Nets (CPNs) model result from the customized input statements of the model as well as the modeling process itself, which requires several simplifications, e.g., neither the Bitcoin nor the Ethereum consensus algorithm and mining process were implemented in the CPN model

Summary

Introduction

The persistent growth and expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT) [1,2], the progressing digitization of our daily life [3,4], and the emergence of complex machine-to-machine, or machine-to-human transaction and interaction scenarios [5], results in a growing popularity of wireless ad hoc networks such as mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) or vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). In voting or majority based systems, if left unchecked, this type of attack can allow an attacker to use a minority of nodes with many identities to overvote outvote the legitimate participants. Such attacks are very common in peer-to-peer networks, and they can threaten the overall security and integrity

Results

Discussion

Conclusion