Secure IoT Data Management in a Private Ethereum Blockchain

IoT has proven valuable in many industries such as Supply Chain, Shipping and Transportation providing updates on the status of shipments in real time. This has resulted in a large amount of data created by IoT devices that require real time processing. Blockchain has also emerged as a trusted common data storage among multiple participants in IoT systems. However, it is essential to verify the authenticity of data before they go in to the blockchain. Some IoT data must be also encrypted in a secure manner. In this paper, we propose a method to collect sensor data from IoT devices and use blockchain to store and retrieve the collected data in a secure and decentralized fashion. A testbed private blockchain system with Ethereum and Raspberry Pi has been developed to test the feasibility and performance of blockchain-based secure IoT system. We employ private PKI for key management and TPM for storing keys, signing, verifying and encrypting data in a trusted way. We describe the structure of the testbed, decentralized storage system based on Ethereum Swarm and IPFS, TPM configuration processes, smart contract codes, and detailed operation sequences. Performance has been measured with 5000 test transactions in 8 different configurations. The result shows that Ethereum blockchain with Swarm can offer about 9 transactions per second. Encryption and decryption is shown to reduce the performance slightly to about 8 transactions per second. The proposed system can provide a secure IoT Blockchain platform for small industrial applications at low cost.

[1]  Yongjun Li,et al.  Building an Ethereum and IPFS-Based Decentralized Social Network System , 2018, 2018 IEEE 24th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS).

[2]  Zengxiang Li,et al.  Building an Ethereum-Based Decentralized Smart Home System , 2018, 2018 IEEE 24th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS).

[3]  Charlie Bennett,et al.  The Interplanetary File System , 2017 .

[4]  Shawn Wilkinson,et al.  Storj A Peer-to-Peer Cloud Storage Network , 2014 .

[5]  Ali Kassem,et al.  Decentralized Voting Platform Based on Ethereum Blockchain , 2018, 2018 IEEE International Multidisciplinary Conference on Engineering Technology (IMCET).

[6]  Claudia Po,et al.  Decentralizing the Stock Exchange using Blockchain An Ethereum-based implementation of the Bucharest Stock Exchange , 2018 .

[7]  Elie F. Kfoury,et al.  Secure End-to-End VoLTE Based on Ethereum Blockchain , 2018, 2018 41st International Conference on Telecommunications and Signal Processing (TSP).

[8]  Arda Yurdakul,et al.  Integrating low-power IoT devices to a blockchain-based infrastructure: work-in-progress , 2017, EMSOFT '17.

[9]  Marcel Antal,et al.  Decentralizing the Stock Exchange using Blockchain An Ethereum-based implementation of the Bucharest Stock Exchange , 2018, 2018 IEEE 14th International Conference on Intelligent Computer Communication and Processing (ICCP).

[10]  E. Giangreco,et al.  Make Users Own Their Data: A Decentralized Personal Data Store Prototype Based on Ethereum and IPFS , 2018, 2018 3rd International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies (SpliTech).

[11]  Nir Kshetri,et al.  Can Blockchain Strengthen the Internet of Things? , 2017, IT Professional.

[12]  John M. Easton,et al.  Towards Encrypting Industrial Data on Public Distributed Networks , 2018, 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data).

[13]  Arda Yurdakul,et al.  IDMoB: IoT Data Marketplace on Blockchain , 2018, 2018 Crypto Valley Conference on Blockchain Technology (CVCBT).

[14]  Wei Ni,et al.  Attack and Defence of Ethereum Remote APIs , 2018, 2018 IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps).

[15]  Yaling Zhang,et al.  A Blockchain-Based Framework for Data Sharing With Fine-Grained Access Control in Decentralized Storage Systems , 2018, IEEE Access.

[16]  Arda Yurdakul,et al.  Work-in-progress: integrating low-power IoT devices to a blockchain-based infrastructure , 2017, 2017 International Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT).

[17]  Arda Yurdakul,et al.  Designing a Blockchain-Based IoT With Ethereum, Swarm, and LoRa: The Software Solution to Create High Availability With Minimal Security Risks , 2018, IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine.