An Over-the-Blockchain Firmware Update Framework for IoT Devices

Nowadays, a lot of Internet-of-Things devices and its applications are developed to improve the people's quality of life. With the growth of circulating IoT devices in human's community, improper device management and firmware distribution mechanism could lead to many issues that harm the security and privacy of the device owner. In this paper, a firmware update framework for IoT devices based on blockchain technology is proposed. The proposed framework aims to provide secure verification on the firmware released by the device manufacturer. In addition, the integrity of distributed firmware to the end-device could be maintained. The proposed firmware update framework consists of four processes: the creation of firmware update contract, the creation of firmware replication contract, the direct firmware update mechanism and the indirect firmware update mechanism.