The IoT is pervading our daily activities and lives with devices scattered all over our cities, transport systems, buildings, homes and bodies. This invasion of devices with sensors and communication capabilities brings big concerns, mainly about the privacy and confidentiality of the collected information. These concerns hinder the wide adoption of the IoT. To overcome them, in this work, we present an Blockchain-based architecture for IoT access authorizations. Following the IoT tendency requirements, our architecture is user transparent, user friendly, fully decentralized, scalable, fault tolerant and compatible with a wide range of today's access control models used in the IoT. Finally, our architecture also has a secure way to establish relationships between users, devices and group of both, allowing the assignment of attributes for these relationships and their use in the access control authorization.

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ControlChain: Blockchain as a Central Enabler for Access Control Authorizations in the IoT

Although the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks are yet to be fully investigated, the visionaries of the 6th generation (6G) echo systems have already come into the discussion. Therefore, in order to consolidate and solidify the security and privacy in 6G networks, we survey how security may impact the envisioned 6G wireless systems, possible challenges with different 6G technologies, and the potential solutions. We provide our vision on 6G security and security key performance indicators (KPIs) with the tentative threat landscape based on the foreseen 6G network architecture. Moreover, we discuss the security and privacy challenges that may encounter with the available 6G requirements and potential 6G applications. We also give the reader some insights into the standardization efforts and research-level projects relevant to 6G security. In particular, we discuss the security considerations with 6G enabling technologies such as distributed ledger technology (DLT), physical layer security, distributed AI/ML, visible light communication (VLC), THz, and quantum computing. All in all, this work intends to provide enlightening guidance for the subsequent research of 6G security and privacy at this initial phase of vision towards reality.

/pdf/the-roadmap-to-6g-security-and-privacy-4dpyc39y4v.pdf

The Roadmap to 6G Security and Privacy

With the advancement of blockchain technology, and the proliferation of Internet of things (IoT)‐driven devices, the blockchain‐IoT applications is changing the perception and working infr...

A Distributed framework for detecting DDoS attacks in smart contract‐based Blockchain‐IoT Systems by leveraging Fog computing

Blockchain is a key technology that enables cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, etc. In recent years, researchers have ventured into tapping the potential of blockchain‐based ecosy...

Blockchain‐based security aspects in heterogeneous Internet‐of‐Things networks: A survey

Blockchain technology, as a disruptive technology, has received widespread attention in the past few years from all over the world, leading to rapid growth in research outputs. This paper adopts a quantitative method, the main path analysis, to comprehensively and systematically investigate the development trajectories of blockchain. Four different main paths, the global main path, the forward local main path, the backward local main path and the key-route main path are conducted simultaneously. By analyzing these various paths, on the one hand, this paper finds that papers on paths focus on two aspects, cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based applications. On the other hand, this paper discovers several major research areas of blockchain, including internet of things (IoT), healthcare, energy industry, voting, insurance and supply chain management. At the same time, this paper further analyzes the research hotspots, as well as the development trajectories of blockchain in the areas of IoT, healthcare and supply chain management by using the key-route main path analysis. This paper is conductive for both the new and experienced researchers to identify some influential papers and grasp the knowledge diffusion paths in these domains.

Knowledge diffusion paths of blockchain domain: the main path analysis

The traditional Software Defined Network (SDN) architecture is based on single controller in the Control Plane. Therefore, network functioning become highly dependent on the performance of the single controller in the Control Plane, which is undesirable for any reliable application. Despite many advantages of SDN, its deployment in the practical field is restricted since reliability and fault-tolerance capabilities of the system are not satisfactory. To overcome these difficulties of SDN, (FT-SDN) architecture has been proposed. The proposed architecture consists of a simple and effective distributed Control Plane with multiple controllers. FT-SDN uses a synchronized mechanism to periodically update the controller’s state within themselves. In case of failure, FT-SDN has the ability to select another working controller based on the distance and delays among different network entities. The performance of the FT-SDN architecture was examined with respect to different specifications in the presence of faults. Experimentation was done in simulation where results were found to be satisfactory.

FT-SDN: A Fault-Tolerant Distributed Architecture for Software Defined Network

IPv6 over low-power wireless personal area network (6LoWPAN) has been widely used for large-scale sensing and actuating purposes in the Internet of Things (IoT). Though promising, many challenges, such as high latency, heterogeneity, and packet loss persist. To mitigate these challenges, the software-defined network (SDN) technique can be hybridized with existing IoT structures that can address many of them. In this article, we propose an approach—edge-based 6LoWPAN-SDN (6LE-SDN) architecture, which can improve the system limitations mentioned. It uses an edge-based computational capability to improve the network performance over 6LoWPAN. To reduce heterogeneity, we develop a hybrid-edge switch that helps to enable communication among 6LoWPAN and SDN entities. For efficient communication between different devices, a new protocol—edge-based 6LoWPAN-SDN protocol (6LE-SDNP) is proposed, which is capable of ensuring optimal routing of the packet for efficient communication among the devices. We use the SDN-based edge controller for reducing the latency of the network apart from improving the interoperability feature. The testbed evaluation of the proposed solution indicates satisfactory performance in terms of reducing latency by 60% and network overhead by 91%. The 6LE-SDN network also succeeded in reducing the average round trip time (RTT) by 31% and the packet loss by 70% as compared to that of the traditional 6LoWPAN-based IoT.

6LE-SDN: An Edge-Based Software-Defined Network for Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an upcoming technology in our present day network scenario. IoT consists of resource constrained devices which communicate with each other to deliver the required services to the users. As more and more devices are connected to the existing IoT network, security and privacy aspects in IoT have become prominent. Limitations of IoT devices are resource and energy constraints, which restrict its computational capability. Thus, it becomes a challenge for scientists to design suitable security systems for IoT. The Blockchain is a proven distributed and secure system for financial transactions. This paper outlines security and privacy problems in IoT. It also explores the convergence of IoT and Blockchain technology and explores how the underlying technologies of Blockchain can be improved to address the various security problems associated with IoT.

Blockchain-Based Security Aspects in Internet of Things Network

Blockchain technology is one of the key technologies that have the potential to solve many of the Internet of Things (IoT) challenges. The IoT environment consists of numerous resource-constrained devices. The security and privacy of these devices have become primary concerns among consumers and businesses. Although, Blockchain could provide better security and privacy to these devices, their limited memory, battery life, and processing capabilities make Blockchain-IoT integration very challenging. Current implementations of Blockchain use cryptographic schemes like SHA-256 and ECDSA. However, the resource-constrained nature of IoT devices demands lightweight versions of the Blockchain for IoT. In this work, a lightweight hash-based Blockchain (LightBC) is proposed for the IoT, which adapts the SPONGENT hash function. It has been emulated and compared with SHA-256 based Blockchain on a Blockchain emulator and satisfactory results were found for upto 8000 nodes. The IoT architecture has also been proposed for implementing the same.

Fabiola Hazel Pohrmen

Papers

Blockchain‐based security aspects in heterogeneous Internet‐of‐Things networks: A survey

FT-SDN: A Fault-Tolerant Distributed Architecture for Software Defined Network

6LE-SDN: An Edge-Based Software-Defined Network for Internet of Things

Blockchain-Based Security Aspects in Internet of Things Network

LightBC: A Lightweight Hash-Based Blockchain for the Secured Internet of Things