Securing Internet of Things Environment using Lightweight Blockchain Approach

Abstract

Internet of things (IoT) is an environment where heterogenous devices are interconnected to perform a specific function. IoT applications has gradually become an essential part in different fields due to the ascent of information-based society and the diversity of IoT domains and applications. However, like any other emerging technology, IoT has not attained the level of maturity necessary to attain relevant required security and vulnerability suppression levels that may affect the potential benefits of IoT. The limited computational resources and memory of IoT devices are the main challenges one faces when dealing with IoT. Therefore, we need to guarantee a certain level of security for this system. On the other hand, blockchain technology has shown a promising capability of providing secure transactions and therefore, may help in securing IoT environment. In this paper, we explore the utilization of blockchain technology in the authentication of Iot environment. Hence, we propose a new solution that takes the advantage of decentralized blockchain and secure nature and combines it in IoT system that works with MQTT protocol. Furthermore, the system is built on fog computing technology that acts as the backbone for this system to enhance the overall performance and add an extra layer of defense to the system. Finally, we conducted a simulation of the proposed model to measure the environment performance key metrics and the results showed that the proposed model has a strong potential with good performance.