An Innovative Blockchain Based Application of the Extended Triple Diffie-Hellman Protocol for IoT

The massive use of the Internet with the increase in the number of IoT devices in the last decade is leading to explore new frontiers to ensure secure communication between people and devices. Existing solutions have severe limitations in terms of security and resistance to distributed attacks, and a Blockchain-based solution has not yet been explored. The Extended Triple Diffie-Hellman (X3DH) protocol has been used for years but it is typically based on a single trust third-party server that represents a single point of failure (SPoF) being consequently exposed to well-known Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks. The BlockChain-Based X3DH (BCB-X3DH) protocol has already been proposed to eliminate such a risk, combining the well-known X3DH security mechanisms with the intrinsic features of data non-repudiation and immutability that are typical of Smart Contracts. In this paper, we have progressed our research further to implement this protocol in order to fit Edge and IoT scenarios including low-power embedded devices with limited hardware capabilities with the purpose to guarantee complete on-chain secure communication management, even optimizing battery life-cycle at the same time.