Lightweight IoT Research Articles

Blockchain-Based IoT Access Control System: Towards Security, Lightweight, and Cross-Domain

Most IoT devices cannot afford to be a blockchain node due to the high computation and storage loads. Thus, the blockchain is usually deployed on one delegate node, e.g., the edge device or cloud, which may encounters three drawbacks: (1) The delegate node becomes the single failure point when the number of delegate notes are limited. (2) The delegate node replicating the blockchain data can lead to privacy information leak. (3) The delegate node is vulnerable to the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. To tackle these drawbacks, we consider to minimize the redundant of blockchain to make the IoT devices as the specialized blockchain nodes. In this paper, we integrate a permissioned blockchain (HLF), an attribute-based access control (ABAC) and an identity-based signature (IBS) to build a security, lightweight, and cross-domain blockchain-based IoT access control system. Specifically, we divided the IoT system into different function domains, named IoT domains. Then, we establish a local blockchain ledger for each IoT domain to enable more IoT devices as blockchain nodes. The local blockchain ledger records the IoT domain entities’ attributes, policy files’ digests, and access decisions. Meanwhile, we use the channel technology of HLF to realize cross-domain access and use the IBS to filter the legal access requests for each IoT domain to prevent DDoS attacks. We also design a policy decision point (PDP) selection algorithm that select multiple IoT devices (blockchain nodes) to achieve the real-time distributed policy decisions (off-chain). Finally, we implement and evaluate the proposed system to demonstrate its practicality.

Secure Data Access Control With Fair Accountability in Smart Grid Data Sharing: An Edge Blockchain Approach

Nowadays, the advance of smart grid technology has fostered the development of microgrids, which can efficiently control and manage the distributed energy resources (DERs). In smart grid, IoT devices generate huge amounts of data, which are collected and shared among DERs, microgrids, and the main grid. To protect the shared data, it is necessary to implement the secure and efficient data access control. Ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) is a promising solution for the distributed system. However, lightweight IoT devices with limited computing capability cannot handle the computationally intensive ABE algorithms. To overcome this constraint, the decryption phase of CP-ABE is usually outsourced to the cloud, but this is inefficient and not safe enough in the distributed environment. In this article, we propose an edge blockchain empowered secure data access control scheme with fair accountability for the smart grid. The computation workloads of end user devices are outsourced to the edge nodes in a consortium blockchain system We adopt an on-chain/off-chain approach to ensure the flexible data sharing. Additionally, we adopt the threshold secret sharing scheme to establish a distributed authority. The security analysis and performance evaluation are conducted to prove the security and efficiency of our scheme. We use the Raspberry Pi to simulate lightweight IoT devices in the Hyperledger fabric platform to prove the usability of our scheme.

Analysis of differential distribution of lightweight block cipher based on parallel processing on GPU

As the fast development of IoT technology, various security solutions have to be considered when the corresponding solutions are being deployed. Due to the lightweight nature of the IoT devices such as the RFID tags and so on, traditional encryption schemes such as AES which are relatively heavy in the sense of operations cannot be applied here. Lightweight block ciphers have since become a default standard when considering security protections on such lightweight IoT devices. Compared with the security analysis approaches by taking advantage of the differential or linear cryptanalysis, the security margin of lightweight block ciphers can be further derived more accurately due to the small internal state. In this paper, we investigate the security margin of the lightweight block cipher structure especially the SPN design by taking advantage of the parallel computing power of modern GPU architecture. We show how to accelerate the computing of the statistical distinguisher, which is the crucial point for analyzing the security of the cipher design. Our proposed methods gain notable advantage against traditional CPU architecture in terms of time complexity and possess extensibility for other block ciphers.

Security Analysis of Lightweight IoT Cipher: Chaskey

This paper presents the differential cryptanalysis of ARX based cipher Chaskey using tree search based heuristic approach. ARX algorithms are suitable for resource-constrained devices such as IoT and very resistant to standard cryptanalysis such as linear or differential. To make a differential attack, it is important to make differential characteristics of the cipher. Finding differential characteristics in ARX is the most challenging task nowadays. Due to the bigger block size, it is infeasible to calculate lookup tables for non-linear components. Transition through the non-linear layer of cipher faces a huge state space problem. The problem of huge state space is a serious research topic in artificial intelligence (AI). The proposed heuristic tool use such methods inspired by Nested Tree-based sampling to find differential paths in ARX cipher and successfully applied to get a state of art results for differential cryptanalysis with a very fast and simpler framework. The algorithm can also be applied in different research areas in cryptanalysis where such huge state space is a problem.

Networking Integrated Cloud–Edge–End in IoT: A Blockchain-Assisted Collective Q-Learning Approach

Recently, the term “Internet of Things” (IoT) has elicited escalating attention. The flexibility, agility, and ubiquitous accessibility have encouraged the integration between machine learning (ML) with IoT. However, there are many challenges that present the key inhibitors in moving ML to the public solution, such as centralized training, poor training efficiency, and heavy computing capabilities requirements. Therefore, bringing learning intelligence to edge IoT nodes has been spotlighted for some researches. Meanwhile, how to govern the use of learning results efficiently, reliably, scalably, and safely is hampered by the heterogeneity and nonconfidence among IoT nodes. In this article, we propose a blockchain-based collective Q-learning (CQL) approach to address the above issues, where lightweight IoT nodes are used to train parts of learning layers, then employing blockchain to share learning results in a verifiable and permanent manner. We further improve the traditional Proof of Work (PoW). Instead of solving a meaningless puzzle, we regard the learning process in the IoT node as a piece of work. Accordingly, the winner is the IoT node with the minimum reduced percentage of the learning loss function, referred to as the Proof-of-Learning (PoL) consensus protocol. Specifically, in order to show how the CQL approach works, we use it to address a networking integrated cloud-edge-end resource allocation in IoT. The experimental results reveal the superior performance of the proposed scheme.

DevOps Contract for Assuring Execution of IoT Microservices in the Edge

The increasing availability of edge and IoT infrastructure-as-a-service allows us to develop lightweight IoT components and deploy them into edge/IoT infrastructures, enabling edge analytics and controls. This paper introduces the development of service contracts for IoT microservices from DevOps perspectives. We analyze stakeholders and present our methods to support stakeholders to program IoT service contracts. We address the diversity of service contracts by using common languages for IoT data and programming. We integrate the development and operation lifecycle of IoT contracts with IoT software components and with supporting DevOps services. To illustrate our approach, we use a real-world Base Transceiver Station maintenance application with Raspberry Pi, Java, JavaScript, JSON and other microservices.

IoT information sharing security mechanism based on blockchain technology

The blockchain is the first distributed recording system with its own trust mechanism. It builds a reliable architecture for decentralized control through multi-node information redundancy. Based on this, this paper proposes lightweight IoT information sharing security framework based on blockchain technology. The framework adopts a double-chain model combining data blockchain and transaction blockchain: distributed storage and tamper-proof of data in the data blockchain, and improved by the improved practical Byzantine fault-tolerant (PBFT) mechanism consensus algorithm. Data registration efficiency; resource and data transactions in the transaction blockchain is improved transaction efficiency and privacy protection through improved algorithms based on partial blind signature algorithms. A dynamic game method of node cooperation is proposed to prevent malicious behavior of local dominance. The state of the unknown node is estimated by reporting the node’s institutional reputation value; the high-trust reference report is used to correct the weight of the malicious node in the overall report and node merging, and finally reach the Bayesian equilibrium. Finally, the simulation experiment department carried out verification analysis on the anti-attack capability, double-strand processing capability and delay. The results show that the framework is safe, effective and feasible, and it is feasible to verify the location information of the system for secure storage devices.

Securing IoTs in distributed blockchain: Analysis, requirements and open issues

Abstract IoTs are integrated, interconnected concepts of things or objects in our surroundings, with an essence of virtualization. The interconnectivity of the business world, health environments, smart home devices, and daily use gadgets takes place through the networks based on cloud infrastructure which is not restricted to jurisdictional, geographic, and national boundaries. However, the light-weight IoT devices come with a limited storage and processing capacity. Due to this limitation, the need for separate data storage arises so that data can be utilized in the future. These third-party storage services are provided at the cost of a user’s privacy. Furthermore, the storage relies on a centralized database which is more open to attack due to its single point security breach chances. Furthermore, present IoT data is not trustworthy in the external environment, as data manipulation is lacking when data is shared with other parties. To overcome the above-mentioned limitations of IoT, the emerging secure decentralized storage technology; Blockchain, have begun to abandon the significant impact in the IoT with the enhancement of security and incorporating a large number of devices in the today’s ecosystems. In this paper, we have performed a comprehensive literature review to show how well blockchain has transformed the smart environments connected with IoT sensors and the underlying issues for its adaptation. Further, a well-organized taxonomy is presented by highlighting the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of blockchain based IoT environment. In addition to that, we have clearly presented the verities of blockchain applications such as bitcoin (earlier cryptocurrency used in blockchain) or ethereum (establish smart contracts) based works and pinpoint the necessities and security challenges. Moreover, we have highlighted the essential implementation requirements of blockchain in the IoTs. This paper is also equipped with a state-of-the-art framework of IoT while adopting security features and decentralized storage requirements of the blockchain. In the end, we have presented insightful challenges need to be addressed to obtain efficient, secure, and effective communication goals and to provide private and secure services for users as per their requirements.

Block-Stream as a Service: A More Secure, Nimble, and Dynamically Balanced Cloud Service Model for Ambient Computing

Cloud computing has become mainstream in the last few years. Diverse services based on IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and app store models have been widely available to millions of users worldwide. At the same time, transparent computing (TC) has also gained strong interest in China. With the rapid development of IoT, increasing IoT devices will be deployed to provide information services for end users. As we are heading into the era of ambient computing, where end users are immersed in seamless computing devices and services, the boundary between cloud and devices is getting blurry, and more devices and services need to be securely managed. The existing service models that are defined for user-cloud interaction should be extended to serve more diverse and lightweight devices with nimble and fluid services. With this evolution trend, it is paramount for both cloud service providers and IoT service operators to manage the security and integrity of these services. In this article, we propose a new cloud service model, named block-stream as a service (BaaS), based on our previous study on TC. BaaS is nimbler than SaaS and has better security management than an app store. It is expected that this new cloud service model has great potential to support the vision of ambient computing and securely manage diverse applications on lightweight IoT devices.

Comparative Study of Authenticated Encryption Targeting Lightweight IoT Applications

This article focuses on detecting attacks to power system with the help of cyber-physical co-modeling. The foundational algorithm used to detect attacks is a new dynamic state estimator that can provide real-tie models of the system improving over legacy state estimators and three-phase linear state estimators. This new system can help operators of the power grid detect when device settings have been tampered, and help identified the context of a command (i.e., under which conditions of the system are specific commands allowed). —Alvaro Cardenas, University of Texas at Dallas

Serving at the Edge: A Scalable IoT Architecture Based on Transparent Computing

By moving service provisioning from the cloud to the edge, edge computing becomes a promising solution in the era of IoT to meet the delay requirements of IoT applications, enhance the scalability and energy efficiency of lightweight IoT devices, provide contextual information processing, and mitigate the traffic burdens of the backbone network. However, as an emerging field of study, edge computing is still in its infancy and faces many challenges in its implementation and standardization. In this article, we study an implementation of edge computing, which exploits transparent computing to build scalable IoT platforms. Specifically, we first propose a transparent computing based IoT architecture, and clearly identify its advantages and associated challenges. Then, we present a case study to clearly show how to build scalable lightweight wearables with the proposed architecture. Some future directions are finally pointed out to foster continued research efforts.

Gateway-Assisted Retransmission for Lightweight and Reliable IoT Communications.

Message Queuing Telemetry Transport for Sensor Networks (MQTT-SN) and Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) are two protocols supporting publish/subscribe models for IoT devices to publish messages to interested subscribers. Retransmission mechanisms are introduced to compensate for the lack of data reliability. If the device does not receive the acknowledgement (ACK) before retransmission timeout (RTO) expires, the device will retransmit data. Setting an appropriate RTO is important because the delay may be large or retransmission may be too frequent when the RTO is inappropriate. We propose a Gateway-assisted CoAP (GaCoAP) to dynamically compute RTO for devices. Simulation models are proposed to investigate the performance of GaCoAP compared with four other methods. The experiment results show that GaCoAP is more suitable for IoT devices.

Study on Lightweight IoT Sensor Gateway Using Open Source Hardware

Study on Lightweight IoT Sensor Gateway Using Open Source Hardware