Secure Cyber-Physical Object Identification in Industrial IoT-Systems

Abstract Production systems equipped with industrial internet-of-things devices are on the rise allowing smart manufacturing within the trend of industry 4.0 by implementing decentralized decision making. The interconnected devices allow for high transparency in systems by tracking environmental data and actions performed by the actors of the systems. However, they are an easy target for attackers to tamper the authenticity, accountability, and integrity of systems. Therefore, trusted data within systems is required. The trust bases on well-behavior over a period of time of a dedicated entity. Therefore, entities have to be identified to track their behavior. Here, a system of verifiable distributed identities is presented and verified by a simulation. Using a newly introduced zero-knowledge-proof with only two packages exchanged a secure replacement of parts of a product such as a production machine can be achieved without relying on a central authority during the product’s utilization phase.