To decrease the IoT attack surface and provide protection against security threats such as introduction of fake IoT nodes and identity theft, IoT requires scalable device identity and authentication management. This work proposes a blockchain-based identity management approach with consensus authentication as a scalable solution for IoT device authentication management. The proposed approach relies on having a blockchain secure tamper proof ledger and a novel lightweight consensus-based identity authentication. The results show that the proposed decentralised authentication system is scalable as we increase number of nodes. 

Blockchain-based Device Identity Management with Consensus Authentication for IoT Devices

Although blockchain is an emerging technology, it has been applied in a lot of domains by leveraging its features. Traditional identity management systems have many issues regarding security and privacy of personal data. Blockchain has the potential to mitigate and avoid such issues by creating trust among the parties involved in the system while reducing reliance on third-party authorities. The first blockchain-based identity management solutions were launched in 2016. Since then, due to high demand, numerous primary and experimental studies and intatives have been carried out to provide solutions to this research topic. Along with that, there are also a lot of secondary studies to overview the current state of research on this topic. However, the number of systematic research articles is still limited and each research has it limitation. Through this study, we provide a novel systematic literature including categorization of studies into predefined categories (domain, research type, place of publication), analysis of publication frequency, co-authorship, number of papers citing each paper of all studied papers. Comparing to other systematic literature mapping studies, our paper provides a more comprehensive view of the studied articles. In particular, we analyze the number of citations, which no study has ever done. In this research, we studied 361 papers published from January 2009 to April 2022 in four big databases (IEEE Explore, ACM Digital Library, ScienceDirect, Springer Link), the largest number of articles studied compared to previous researches. The obtained results show that most of the articles under validation research type (providing solution and implementing that solution but not in real-world scenarios) propose solutions/systems, models/schemes and architectures to address general problems. We also find that the majority of authors works alone or collaborate in a separate group and co-work in only one paper. This shows that there is no long term collaboration in blockchain-based IdM identity management, and thus subsequent publications presenting real-world blockchain-based identity management products do not exist. 

A Systematic Literature Mapping on Using Blockchain Technology in Identity Management

Although blockchain is an emerging technology, it has been applied in a lot of domains by leveraging its features. Traditional identity management systems have many issues regarding security and privacy of personal data. Blockchain has the potential to mitigate and avoid such issues by creating trust among the parties involved in the system while reducing reliance on third-party authorities. The first blockchain-based identity management solutions were launched in 2016. Since then, due to high demand, numerous primary and experimental studies, and intatives have been carried out to provide solutions to this research topic. Along with that, there are also a lot of secondary studies to overview the current state of research on this topic. However, the number of systematic research articles is still limited and each research has its limitation. Through this study, we provide a novel systematic literature including categorization of studies into predefined categories (domain, research type, place of publication), analysis of publication frequency, co-authorship, number of papers citing each paper of all studied papers. Comparing to other systematic literature mapping studies, our paper provides a more comprehensive view of the studied articles. In particular, we analyze the number of citations, which no study has ever done. In this research, we studied 361 papers published from January 2009 to April 2022 in four big databases (IEEE Explore, ACM Digital Library, ScienceDirect, Springer Link), the largest number of articles studied compared to previous researches. The obtained results show that most of the articles under validation research type (providing solution and implementing that solution but not in real-world scenarios) propose solutions/systems, models/schemes and architectures to address general problems. We also find that the majority of authors works alone or collaborate in a separate group and co-work in only one paper. This shows that there is no long term collaboration in blockchain-based identity management, and thus subsequent publications presenting real-world blockchain-based identity management products do not exist.

Device identity management and authentication are one of the critical and primary security challenges in IoT. In order to decrease the IoT attack surface and provide protection from security threats such as introduction of fake IoT nodes and identity theft, IoT requires scalable device identity management systems and resilient device authentication mechanisms. Existing mechanisms for device identity management and device authentication were not designed for huge number of devices and therefore are not suitable for IoT environments. This work presents results of a blockchain-based identity management approach with consensus authentication, as a scalable solution for IoT device authentication management. Our identity management approach relies on having a blockchain secure tamper proof registry and lightweight consensus-based identity authentication.

Blockchain-based scalable authentication for IoT: poster abstract

Advancements in IoT technology has provided great benefits, unfortunately, IoT adoption also causes an increase in the attack surface which intensify security risks. As a consequence, different types of IoT smart devices have become the main targets of many high-profile cyber-attacks. To safeguard against threats such as introduction of fake IoT nodes and identity theft, the IoT needs scalable and resilient device authentication management. Contrary to existing mechanisms for IoT device authentication which are unsuitable for huge number of devices, my research focuses on decentralised and distributed security mechanisms that will improve current protocols such as Oauth2, GDOI and GNAP.

Munkenyi Mukhandi

Papers

Blockchain-based scalable authentication for IoT: poster abstract

Decentralised and Scalable Security for IoT Devices