Blockchain-enabled Internet Of Things Research Articles

An Efficient Privacy and Anonymity Setup on Hyperledger Fabric for Blockchain-Enabled Internet of Things (IoT) Devices

The rise in IoT (Internet of Things) devices poses a significant security challenge. Maintaining privacy and ensuring anonymity within the system is a sought-after feature with inevitable trade-offs, such as scalability and increased complexity, making it incredibly challenging to handle. To tackle this, we introduce our proposed work for managing IoT devices using Hyperledger Fabric. We integrated our system on the blockchain with a closed-circuit television (CCTV) security camera fixed at a rental property. The CCTV security camera redirects its feed whenever a new renter walks in. We have introduced the web token for authentication from the renter to the owner. Our contributions include an efficient framework architecture using key invalidation scenarios and token authentication, a novel chain code algorithm, and stealth addresses with modified ring signatures. We performed different analyses to show the system’s throughput and latency through stress testing. We have shown the significant advantages of the proposed architectures by comparing similar existing schemes. Our proposed scheme enhances the security of blockchain-enabled IoT devices and mitigates the single point of failure issue in the existing scheme, providing a robust and reliable solution. Our future work includes scaling it up to cater to the needs of the healthcare system.

An Efficient Privacy and Anonymity Setup on Hyperledger Fabric for Blockchain-Enabled Internet of Things (IoT) Devices

The rise in IoT (Internet of Things) devices poses a significant security challenge. Maintaining privacy and ensuring anonymity within the system is a sought-after feature with inevitable trade-offs, such as scalability and increased complexity, making it incredibly challenging to handle. To tackle this, we introduce our proposed work for managing IoT devices using Hyperledger Fabric. We integrated our system on the blockchain with a closed-circuit television (CCTV) security camera fixed at a rental property. The CCTV security camera redirects its feed whenever a new renter walks in. We have introduced the web token for authentication from the renter to the owner. Our contributions include an efficient framework architecture using key invalidation scenarios and token authentication, a novel chain code algorithm, and stealth addresses with modified ring signatures. We performed different analyses to show the system’s throughput and latency through stress testing. We have shown the significant advantages of the proposed architectures by comparing similar existing schemes. Our proposed scheme enhances the security of blockchain-enabled IoT devices and mitigates the single point of failure issue in the existing scheme, providing a robust and reliable solution. Our future work includes scaling it up to cater to the needs of the healthcare system.

GLSBIoT: GWO-based enhancement for lightweight scalable blockchain for IoT with trust based consensus

Blockchain technology, which has gained much attention from researchers, faces challenges when applied to resource-constrained devices in the Internet of Things (IoT). These challenges include significant network overhead and energy-intensive processes. We propose a trust-based ensemble consensus and Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) algorithm to address these limitations. The trust-based ensemble consensus leverages Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus procedures to improve trust levels within the network. To boost scalability and throughput without sacrificing the security and privacy of IoT data, we utilize sidechaining with the efficient GWO algorithm, allowing the construction of parallel chains connected to the main blockchain. Our experimental results outperformed conventional models by increasing throughput by 12.5% while decreasing mining delay by 19.5% and energy usage by 18.3%. The conducted security analysis reveals the presented lightweight framework is robust against Finney, DoS, Sybil, and Masquerade attacks. These improvements suggest the potential of this approach to provide privacy, integrity, and anonymity in blockchain-enabled IoT systems for smart city applications.

Prism Blockchain Enabled Internet of Things with Deep Reinforcement Learning

This paper presents a Deep Reinforcement Learning based IoT enabled Prism BLockchain. The recent advancements in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) motivate the development of a secure infrastructure for storing and sharing vast amounts of data. Blockchain, a distributed and immutable ledger, is best known as a potential solution to data security and privacy for IoT. The scalability of blockchain, which should optimize the throughput and handle the dynamics of the IoT environment, becomes a challenge due to the enormous amount of IoT data. The critical challenge in scaling blockchain is to guarantee decentralization, latency, and security of the system while optimizing the transaction throughput. This paper presents a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based performance optimization for blockchain-enabled IoT. We consider one of the recent promising blockchains, Prism as the underlying blockchain system because of its good performance guarantees. We integrate the IoT data to Prism Blockchain and optimize the performance of the system by leveraging Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) method. The DRL method helps to optimize the blockchain parameters like mining rate and mined blocks to adapt to the environment dynamics of the IoT system. Our results show that the proposed method can improve the throughput of Prism blockchain based IoT systems while preserving Prism performance guarantees. Our scheme can achieve 1.5 times more system rewards than IoT integrated Prism. In our experimental setup, the proposed scheme could improve the average throughput of the system by about 6,000 transactions per sec compared to Prism.

Revolutionizing Retail: Examining the Influence of Blockchain-Enabled IoT Capabilities on Sustainable Firm Performance

Blockchain has revolutionized the field of supply chain management, allowing firms to optimize their operations and achieve enhanced levels of efficiency and environmental responsibility. This study investigates the relationships between the functionalities of the blockchain-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) and many aspects of the supply chain, namely, supplier integration, internal integration, customer integration, and sustainable logistic capabilities. It also analyses the impact of these correlations on the supply chain performance and sustainability of firms. This study is grounded in an empirical inquiry carried out using a questionnaire survey of the retail industry in Pakistan. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to analyze the data. The findings indicate a direct correlation between the use of BC-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities and the integration of the supply chain, as well as logistic capabilities. Furthermore, there is a strong and meaningful correlation between blockchain-enabled supply chain integration and sustainable logistic capabilities and firm performance. The research findings indicate that the combined impact of digital innovations results in higher levels of corporate performance and sustainability. By embracing digitization through blockchain technology, business organizations can attain supply chain excellence. This integration enhances the adoption of environmentally beneficial actions, minimizes waste, and decreases carbon emissions across supply chains, thus reinforcing the connection between sustainable firm performance and environmental sustainability. As a result, the enterprises may execute sustainably through improved logistical capabilities and effective integration. The results hold great theoretical and practical significance for improving supply chain management efficacy and accomplishing multiple SDGs, including SDG-8, SDG-9, SDG-11, and SDG-12.

Blockchain-Enabled Intelligent IoT Protocol for High-Performance and Secured Big Financial Data Transaction

In the recent era, the communication network with the support of many wireless technologies is giving benefits for remote access. Such a communication model increases the flexibility for data storage with the management of network resources efficiently with the integration of the Internet of Things (IoT). Although, the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has enabled the development of numerous machine learning-based solutions to provide real-time applications. However, most of the solutions are not prepared to cope with heterogeneous services and the huge amount of device data in the digital world. Furthermore, conducting financial transactions over the Internet raises several security issues. Such restrictions compromise the sensitive data of financial institutions and also degrade the trust of network users in the system. Thus, this article presents a secured blockchain model for high-performance computing in a big data environment, which aims to protect the business activities for financial interaction with intelligent services of software-defined network (SDN) architecture. First, to keep the security credentials, the SDN controller creates an association between the IoT devices and maintains local and global records. Second, the machine learning approach is explored using reliable and fault-tolerant methods to support the network scalability and extract the updated routing information for transmitting financial data. The proposed protocol also provides data integrity with a high level of network availability and copes with the financial security of big data by investigating cryptographic approaches. Our proposed protocol is tested using simulation, and various experiments are performed to show its efficacy in terms of network throughput, computing overhead, data delay, response time, and dropped packets as compared to tunicate swarm algorithm-based optimized routing mechanism (TORM) and RouteChain.

Governance of a Blockchain-Enabled IoT Ecosystem: A Variable Geometry Approach.

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) applications is rapidly expanding, generating increased interest in the incorporation of blockchain technology within the IoT ecosystem. IoT applications enhance the efficiency of our daily lives, and when blockchain is integrated into the IoT ecosystem (commonly referred to as a blockchain-IoT system), it introduces crucial elements, like security, transparency, trust, and privacy, into IoT applications. Notably, potential domains where blockchain can empower IoT applications include smart logistics, smart health, and smart cities. However, a significant obstacle hindering the widespread adoption of blockchain-IoT systems in mainstream applications is the absence of a dedicated governance framework. In the absence of proper regulations and due to the inherently cryptic nature of blockchain technology, it can be exploited for nefarious purposes, such as ransomware, money laundering, fraud, and more. Furthermore, both blockchain and the IoT are relatively new technologies, and the absence of well-defined governance structures can erode confidence in their use. Consequently, to fully harness the potential of integrating blockchain-IoT systems and ensure responsible utilization, governance plays a pivotal role. The implementation of appropriate regulations and standardization is imperative to leverage the innovative features of blockchain-IoT systems and prevent misuse for malicious activities. This research focuses on elucidating the significance of blockchain within governance mechanisms, explores governance tailored to blockchain, and proposes a robust governance framework for the blockchain-enabled IoT ecosystem. Additionally, the practical application of our governance framework is showcased through a case study in the realm of smart logistics. We anticipate that our proposed governance framework will not only facilitate but also promote the integration of blockchain and the IoT in various application domains, fostering a more secure and trustworthy IoT landscape.

Facing to Latency of Hyperledger Fabric for Blockchain-Enabled IoT: Modeling and Analysis

Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), one of the most popular permissioned blockchains, has recently received attention for blockchain-enabled Internet of Things (IoT). However, for IoT applications to handle time-sensitive data, the processing latency in HLF has emerged as a new challenge. In this article, therefore, we establish a practical HLF latency model for HLF-enabled IoT. We first discuss the structure and the transaction flow of HLF-enabled IoT. After implementing real HLF, we capture the latencies that each transaction experiences and show that the total latency of HLF can be modeled as a Gamma distribution, which is validated by conducting a goodness-of-fit test (i.e., the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test). We also provide the parameter values of the modeled latency distribution for various HLF environments. Furthermore, we explore the impacts of three important HLF parameters including the average transaction generation rate, block size, and block-generation timeout on the HLF latency. As a result, this article provides design insights on minimizing the average latency for HLF-enabled IoT.

RETRACTED: An enhanced consortium blockchain diversity mining technique for IoT metadata aggregation

Over the last two decades, Internet of Things (IoT) networks have grown exponentially. Although the devices have relatively low memory, resource, and processing capability, the trend is that nodes generate a large volume of data. That is where cloud technology comes into play to provide storage space. Because of its centralized nature and robustness, a large network operating with cloud assistance may be vulnerable. Due to rigid access control policies, the devices may be vulnerable to malicious activity. On the other hand, cloud technology provides a platform for such a security system to operate. A centralized secure architecture fails to consider mobile and edge devices within the context of these criteria. This raises numerous concerns about trusting third-party cloud intermediaries, which cause security and privacy leaks. The goal of this research is to look into the problem of blockchain consensus algorithms and their applicability in IoT with cloud-native infrastructure in the Ethereum and MultiChain variants. The significant challenge is scaling the core layer without sacrificing decentralization, security, or public verifiability. This type of testbed is used to investigate the impact of architectural design and consensus models in a lightweight IoT environment. Consensus in each IoT transaction remains the most important aspect of blockchain-enabled IoT networks. When the ledger is updated without privacy protection, transaction-oriented breaches can occur. Current practices for integrating finite IoT network resources into infrastructure-oriented blockchain implementations are flawed due to they are willing to sacrifice data security and integrity in order to save time and energy. This encourages researchers to investigate an improved lightweight block verification approach to the blockchain functional framework, that decreases processing needs, network latency, and network overhead substantially. As a result, the layer-3 consensus promotes blockchain to include the block with a 35% improvement in base layer block time efficiency and a 56% increase in throughput.

Securing Low-Power Blockchain-enabled IoT Devices against Energy Depletion Attack

Blockchain-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) envisions a world with rapid development and implementations to change our everyday lives based on smart devices. These devices are attached to the internet that can communicate with each other without human interference. A well-known wireless network in blockchain-enabled IoT frameworks is the Low Power and Lossy Network (LLN) that uses a novel protocol known as Routing protocol for low power and lossy networks (RPL) to provide effective and energy-efficient routing. LLNs that run on RPL are inherently prone to multiple Denial of Service (DoS) attacks due to the low cost, shared medium, and resource-constrained nature of blockchain-enabled IoT devices. A Spam DODAG Information Solicitation (DIS) attack is one of the novel attacks that drains the energy source of legitimate nodes and ends up causing the legitimate nodes to suffer from DoS. To address this problem, a mitigation scheme named DIS Spam Attack Mitigation (DISAM) is proposed. The proposed scheme effectively mitigates the effects of the Spam DIS attack on the network’s performance. The experimental results show that DISAM detects and mitigates the attack quickly and efficiently.

Blockchain-Enabled Internet of Things (IoT) Applications in Healthcare: A Systematic Review of Current Trends and Future Opportunities

The use of advanced computer technology in the healthcare industry has the potential to improve patient care and therapeutic results. The goal of this project is to improve data security, privacy, and decentralisation in healthcare by integrating blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. The adoption of IoT devices makes it possible to gather and analyse patient sensory data in real–time; however centralised processing and storage present problems such as data manipulation and privacy issues. The study investigates the creation of a decentralised IoT-based e-healthcare system that takes these issues into account by utilising blockchain technology. In addition, the paper also emphasises how blockchain use has advanced smart contract technologies. Smart contracts provide safe user authentication for IoT device access, assuring responsibility, traceability, and data integrity. The study investigates the potentially game-changing applications of blockchain technology in healthcare, such as enhanced data interoperability, patient-cantered care, reduced administrative procedures, and increased transaction transparency. The report also highlights the significance of blockchain in managing pharmaceutical supply chains, considering the essential influence on patient welfare and safety. Effective management is essential in the healthcare business because supply chain interruptions or breaches can have serious implications. The present level of research in blockchain-enabled IoT applications for healthcare is examined comprehensively using the PRISMA framework and records from the Scopus database. The three most important research topics are cloud computing, fog computing, and medical services. The results highlight the important role that blockchain-enabled IoT applications have played in enhancing data security and privacy in the healthcare industry. Real-time data gathering, precise diagnoses, individualised treatments, and simplified administrative procedures are all made possible by the integration of blockchain and IoT. Additionally, scalable solutions and insightful data for healthcare decision-making are provided via fog computing, cloud computing, machine learning, and smart contracts.

Speeding at the Edge: An Efficient and Secure Redactable Blockchain for IoT-Based Smart Grid Systems

As a promising approach to extending cloud resources and services, blockchain-enabled internet of things (IoT)-based smart grid edge computing has attracted much attention. However, the edge node’s resource-constraint nature makes it difficult to store the entire chain as the sensing IoT data volume increases. To address this issue, we propose an FS scheme, a fast and secure multi-threshold trapdoor chameleon hash scheme which serves as the basis for block substitution at the edge nodes to solve the storage limitation problem. FS scheme is used to achieve a consensus-based block substitution, which allows t-out-of-n edge nodes to compute a hash collision collaboratively to reliably substitute a historical block without leaking the randomness R. Also, inspired by the rationale of fast polynomial interpolation, we optimize the FS scheme to FS-I to reduce the time complexity from O(nt) to O(tlog2t). In addition, we further optimize FS-I to FS-II by using a fast Fourier transform (FFT) to dramatically improve the computational efficiency of Lagrange interpolation, which leads to a significant improvement in terms of block substitution performance. Finally, We provide security analysis and evaluate the performance through comprehensive experiments and the results show that FS can achieve up to several magnitudes better than DTTCH. The results also demonstrate that the FS scheme can provide high service quality for large-scale IoT-based smart grid systems.

Blockchain-Enabled IoT: Enabling Trust and Security in a Connected World

Abstract: Blockchain technology has gained significant attention for its potential applications in the Internet of Things (IoT) realm. By combining blockchain with IoT, a new paradigm emerges that offers enhanced security, transparency, and trustin IoT networks. In the context of IoT, a blockchain serves as a decentralised and immutable ledger that records all transactions and interactions among connected devices. This decentralisednature eliminates the need for a central authority, ensuring that data exchanges and smart contract executions occur in a transparent and tamper-proof manner. Blockchain enables the creation of trusted ecosystems and facilitates direct peer-to-peer interactions between IoT devices. Through the use of smart contracts, devices can autonomously execute predefined actions based on predetermined conditions, eliminating the need for intermediaries and central control. This decentralised approach enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and improves scalability in IoT networks. Blockchain enhances privacy in IoT networks through cryptographic techniques. Individuals can maintain ownership and control over their personal data, selectively granting access for specific purposes while preserving privacy. However, integrating blockchain and IoT also presents challenges; issues such as scalability, interoperability, and the computational requirements of blockchain consensus algorithms require further research and development to ensure widespread adoption. The paper suggests various approaches to opportunities and challenges

Interference Cancellation Scheme Based on Network Coding in Blockchain-Enabled Internet of Things

In the face of an explosive increase in the number of IoT devices, the IoT model using blockchain technology, like the traditional IoT system, has a common problem, that is, the communication quality is seriously affected by various interferences, which directly limits the improvement of the service quality of the blockchain-enabled IoT system. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to study the interference problem in the existing Internet of Things system using blockchain technology and propose methods to reduce interference. This paper compares and analyzes the performance of two-slot and three-slot network coding enhanced systems, and designs a new MAC layer protocol for blockchain-enabled IoT systems based on network coding technology. On this basis, through enhanced information transmission at the MAC layer and network coding at the physical layer, the multi-layer collaborative communication method is used to reduce the interference between the IoT system devices enabled by the blockchain. The simulation results show that the use of network coding technology can effectively reduce the mutual interference between data sending nodes in the blockchain-enabled IoT system.

Blockchain-Enabled IoT for Rural Healthcare: Hybrid-Channel Communication with Digital Twinning

Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchains are enabling technologies for modern healthcare applications, offering the improved monitoring of patient health and higher data integrity guarantees. However, in rural settings, communication reliability can pose a challenge that constrains real-time data usage. Additionally, the limited computation and communication resources of IoT sensors also means that they may not participate directly in blockchain transactions, reducing trust. This paper proposes a solution to these challenges, enabling the use of blockchain-based IoT healthcare devices in low-bandwidth rural areas. This integrated system, named hybrid channel healthcare chain (HC2), uses two communication channels: short-range communication for device authorisation and bulk data transfer, and long-range the radio for light-weight monitoring and event notifications. Both channels leverage the same cryptographic identity information, and through the use of a cloud-based digital twin, the IoT device is able to sign its own transactions, without disclosing the key to said twin. Patient data are encrypted end to end between the IoT device and data store, with the blockchain providing a reliable record of the data lifecycle. We contribute a model, analytic evaluation and proof of concept for the HC2 system that demonstrates its suitability for the stated scenarios by reducing the number of long-range radio packets needed by 87× compared to a conventional approach.

IoT Data Sharing Platform in Web 3.0 Using Blockchain Technology

As Internet of Things (IoT)-based systems become more prevalent in the era of data-driven intelligence, they are prone to some unprecedented challenges in terms of data security and systems scalability in an era of context-sensitive data. The current advances in IoT-driven data sensing and sharing rely on third-party sources of information (TTPs) that gather data from one party, then transmit it to the other. As a result of TTPs’ involvement, such IoT systems suffer from many issues including but not limited to security, transparency, trust, and immutability as a result of the involvement of the company. Moreover, a multitude of technical impediments, such as the computation and storage poverty of IoTs, privacy concerns, and energy efficiency, enhances the challenges for IoTs. To address these issues of IoT security, we propose a blockchain-enabled open IoT data-sharing framework based on the potential of the interplanetary file system (IPFS). We have used a case study-based approach to evaluate the proposed solution. It is submitted that the proposed scenario is implemented by building smart contracts in Solidity and deploying them on the local Ethereum test network, using the Solidity programming language. With the implementation of smart contracts on the blockchain for access roles in IoT data sensing, the proposed solution advocates for a blockchain-based approach to data security for IoT systems that makes use of smart contracts for access roles.

A blockchain-enabled IoT auditing management system complying with ISO/IEC 15408-2

Recently, blockchain has attracted attention as one of the most promising key platform technologies for leveraging IoT (Internet of Things) security and auditing management with trusted and decentralized architecture. Therefore, the possibilities of using blockchain for providing scalable management, efficient access, and accountability for the massive numbers of extant and emerging IoT devices merits investigation. In this study, we implement a blockchain-enabled IoT auditing management system complying with ISO/IEC 15408-2 requirements. The implemented system is operated with a stable data retrieval time, i.e. 25.74 to 26.77 microseconds, and a stable compressing and uploading time, i.e. 32.51 and 39.9 microseconds when handling and accessing below 100 logs. With more logs, the processing time raises in a proportional manner. The introduced auditing system represents an evolutionary paradigm not only possessing the advantageous characteristics of blockchain technology, i.e. de-centralization, robustness and tamper-resistance, but also fulfilling the critical requirements from ISO/IEC 15408-2 with respect to auditing perspective. Moreover, the scalability is guaranteed, as our proposed IoT auditing management system is suitable for versatile IoT-oriented application services (even on heterogeneous platforms).

A Rate-and-Trust-Based Node Selection Model for Block Transmission in Blockchain Networks

Blockchain-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) has been receiving growing attention. However, IoT nodes are usually resources heterogeneous and subject to malicious attacks, such as the intentional delay of block verification and the transmission of invalid blocks. As a result, a random node-selection model for block transmission may lead to a low transmission rate and serious security risk. To solve the problem, this article proposes a rate-and-trust-based node selection model for block transmission. In our model, we calculate the block transmission rate of a node by the latency and connectivity among nodes and its trust value by its historical transmission and verification behaviors. On this basis, we propose a PageRank-based optimization algorithm for node selection that makes a tradeoff between the transmission rate and the security risk. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed model can achieve better performance than the state-of-the-art methods, including Bitcoin network, Ethereum network, and BlockP2P-EP protocol.

Blockchain-enabled Internet of Things and Virtual Sensor Networks, Mobile Cloud and Edge Computing Systems, and Predictive Modeling and Cognitive Data Fusion Techniques in Big Data-driven Digital Twin Urban Geopolitics and Immersive Hyper-Connected Virtual Spaces

Blockchain-enabled Internet of Things and Virtual Sensor Networks, Mobile Cloud and Edge Computing Systems, and Predictive Modeling and Cognitive Data Fusion Techniques in Big Data-driven Digital Twin Urban Geopolitics and Immersive Hyper-Connected Virtual Spaces

Secure authentication protocol for IoT applications based on blockchain technology

The lack of security in Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure across different applications has attracted the attention of researchers to work on IoT security issues. The paper presents a scenario where blockchain technology is combined with IoT to provide a decentralized security mechanism. Secure authentication and Key-Agreement technique are proposed for IoT nodes and peers to ensure proper authorization before communication can take place. The proposed protocol uses public key cryptography to generate a shared symmetric key for mutual authentication and two-party conversation. The protocol was tested using Scyther and was found to be robust enough to withstand all known authentication-related attacks, including replay, and typing attacks. Hyperledger, a blockchain technology, was employed to provide a more efficient IoT-enabled infrastructure for the scalability of IoT devices on the network. The proposed technique provides a secure and scalable system for device authentication in a blockchain-enabled IoT environment.