LightCert4IoTs: Blockchain-Based Lightweight Certificates Authentication for IoT Applications

Abstract

These in recent days, the proliferation of the internet of things (IoT) within the emergence of fivegeneration (5G) networks has received a huge attention in both industrial and academic domains. A 5G network is a cornerstone of realizing the full potential of the IoT, which interconnects billions of devices wirelessly. However, wireless communication in IoT devices reveals tremendous security risks in different dimensions and precisely in the distribution of the user certificates. The existing X.509 PKI, or the proposed decentralized PKI based on blockchain solutions have lacked practicality, and continue to have security flaws, or have not yet gained widespread acceptance owing to complexity and deployment issues. We present a lightweight certificate in size (LightCert4IoTs) that is not issued by Certification Authorities (CAs) due to the cost and complexity of the assignment of a signed certificate. In LightCert4IoTs first, an end-user (i.e., mobile and IoT devices) issues a selfsigned certificate and lets Local Registration Authorities (LRAs)/EDGE nodes to verify and validate the binding identity-self signed certificate of the users through the Ethereum blockchain where The Ethereum network is used as the global notary for the IoT light certificates by saving them in the blockchain immutable ledger. The LightCert4IoTs leverages the advantages of blockchain technology and smart contracts to address the existing challenges of PKI certificates in IoT devices, which neatly achieve certificate issuance, update, and revocation more securely and efficiently. Finally, the LightCert4IoTs experimental results show that LightCert, as compared to relevant solutions/baselines, achieves reasonable overheads and is suitable for use in low-constrained IoT devices where the memory and processor power are optimized.

A Survey on Life-Cycle-Oriented Certificate Management in Industrial Networking Environments

“…Garba et al [58] and Kim et al [32] both present lightweight mechanisms with the goal of enabling PKIs for resource-deprived IA components. Garba et al [58] present a lightweight certificate profile, whereas Kim et al [32] contribute an efficient and scalable protocol proposal for the deployment and revocation of certificates.…”

“…Garba et al [58] and Kim et al [32] both present lightweight mechanisms with the goal of enabling PKIs for resource-deprived IA components. Garba et al [58] present a lightweight certificate profile, whereas Kim et al [32] contribute an efficient and scalable protocol proposal for the deployment and revocation of certificates. In a similar manner, Duan et al [42], Boudagdigue et al [47,59], and Höglund et al [57] focus on the revocation of certificates given the circumstances of resource-deprived IA components.…”

“…Based on the behavior of the member nodes, they are provided with certificates or not. Garba et al [58] similarly propose the usage of blockchain networks. IIoT devices shall issue self-signed certificates and let local registration authorities verify and validate the identity binding through the Ethereum blockchain that is used as a global notary of certificates.…”

“…The equipment with private keys is considered by some research papers that address both possibilities [11,28,46,53], only the device internal key generation [32,34,41,58], or only external key generation [45,48].…”

An Efficient Lightweight Authentication Scheme for Smart Meter

“…Additionally, attackers may exploit users' personal habits and privacy to attack their electricity data, so the security protection of electricity usage data is also crucial. Current technologies for privacy protection in identity authentication mainly include HMAC [1], Zero-Knowledge Proofs [2], the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) [3], Blind Signatures [4], Group Signatures [5], and Certificates [6]. Compared to other technologies, identity authentication schemes based on the CRT are relatively less demanding in terms of computation overhead, transmission consumption, and memory usage, making them more suitable for smart meter identity authentication.…”