Security and Privacy for Mobile IoT Applications Using Blockchain

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) applications are becoming more integrated into our society and daily lives, although many of them can expose the user to threats against their privacy. Therefore, we find that it is crucial to address the privacy requirements of most of such applications and develop solutions that implement, as far as possible, privacy by design in order to mitigate relevant threats. While in the literature we may find innovative proposals to enhance the privacy of IoT applications, many of those only focus on the edge layer. On the other hand, privacy by design approaches are required throughout the whole system (e.g., at the cloud layer), in order to guarantee robust solutions to privacy in IoT. With this in mind, we propose an architecture that leverages the properties of blockchain, integrated with other technologies, to address security and privacy in the context of IoT applications. The main focus of our proposal is to enhance the privacy of the users and their data, using the anonymisation properties of blockchain to implement user-controlled privacy. We consider an IoT application with mobility for smart vehicles as our usage case, which allows us to implement and experimentally evaluate the proposed architecture and mechanisms as a proof of concept. In this application, data related to the user’s identity and location needs to be shared with security and privacy. Our proposal was implemented and experimentally validated in light of fundamental privacy and security requirements, as well as its performance. We found it to be a viable approach to security and privacy in IoT environments.

Leveraging Blockchain Technology for Ensuring Security and Privacy Aspects in Internet of Things: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The primary information of the included papers [ 90 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 , 95 , 96 , 97 , 98 , 99 , 100 , 101 , 102 , 103 , 104 , 105 , 106 , 107 , 108 , 109 , 110 , 111 , 112 , 113 , 114 , 115 , 116 , 117 , 118 , 119 , 120 , 121 , 122 , 123 , 124 , 125 , 126 , 127 , 128 , 129 , 130 , 131 , 132 ] is shown in Table 1 . Based on the data shown in Figure 4 , we can observe that 13.95% of the total papers were published in 2018 [ 93 , 103 , 111 , 116 , 120 , 124 ], while 30.23% were published in 2019 [ 90 , 92 , 94 ,…”

“…However, many approaches that include blockchain technology in their designs are achieving promising results. Overall, 37.21% of the proposed schemes originate from China [ 92 , 94 , 95 , 96 , 97 , 102 , 104 , 105 , 113 , 114 , 119 , 124 , 125 , 128 , 129 , 132 ], and 62.79% are distributed between 14 countries [ 90 , 91 , 93 , 98 , 99 , 100 , 101 , 103 , 106 , 107 , 108 , 109 , 110 , 111 , 112 , 115 , 116 , 117 , 118 , 120 , 121 , 122 , 123 , 126 , 127 , 130 , 131 ]. Most of the included papers are published in journals, which result in 79.07% [ 90 , 91 , 94 , 96 , 97 , 98 , 99 , 100 , 102 , 104 , …”

Machine and Deep Learning Solutions for Intrusion Detection and Prevention in IoTs: A Survey

“…The open network architecture, heterogeneous device structure, and the drastic use of smart connected devices, in our daily life are leading to serious security and privacy issues [11]. The destruction of water utility pumps in industrial IoT, personal data theft [12], generating false messages as the legitimate users [13], unauthorized control over power stations, smart cars, smart restaurants, and manipulation of private information to block regular services are some of the examples of dangerous threats created in the IoT environment in the recent past [14].…”

“…On the other hand, IPS integrated with firewall and IDS can provide preventive measures with alerts for attacks in a preserved network area. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies like Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Neural Networks (NN) can provide rapid insights by identifying and mitigating the effects of the attack with daily alerts using a smart Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS) [11].…”

IoT Security Challenges: Cloud and Blockchain, Postquantum Cryptography, and Evolutionary Techniques

“…Despite security problems of the public blockchain technologies, there are some use cases when public blockchains might be useful in providing security solutions for IoT platforms [78]. Inherent integrity protection and public nonrepudiation make public blockchain suitable as a timestamping mechanism: Block hashes in a public blockchain can be used as a control value of a private blockchain in IoT nodes, e.g., for logging and monitoring.…”