[论文解读] Blockchain in internet of things: Challenges and Solutions

Ali Dorri, Salil S. Kanhere+1 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Aug 18, 2016

IoT and Edge/Fog Computing参考文献 4被引用 264

一句话总结

论文提出一种轻量级、分层的区块链架构，以提升物联网的安全与隐私，解决传统方法的局限性以及 BC 开销。

ABSTRACT

The Internet of Things IoT is experiencing exponential growth in research and industry, but it still suffers from privacy and security vulnerabilities. Conventional security and privacy approaches tend to be inapplicable for IoT, mainly due to its decentralized topology and the resource-constraints of the majority of its devices. BlockChain BC that underpin the crypto-currency Bitcoin have been recently used to provide security and privacy in peer-to-peer networks with similar topologies to IoT. However, BCs are computationally expensive and involve high bandwidth overhead and delays, which are not suitable for IoT devices. This position paper proposes a new secure, private, and lightweight architecture for IoT, based on BC technology that eliminates the overhead of BC while maintaining most of its security and privacy benefits. The described method is investigated on a smart home application as a representative case study for broader IoT applications. The proposed architecture is hierarchical, and consists of smart homes, an overlay network and cloud storages coordinating data transactions with BC to provide privacy and security. Our design uses different types of BCs depending on where in the network hierarchy a transaction occurs, and uses distributed trust methods to ensure a decentralized topology. Qualitative evaluation of the architecture under common threat models highlights its effectiveness in providing security and privacy for IoT applications.

研究动机与目标

• 由于去中心化拓扑和资源受限，激发物联网的安全与隐私挑战。
• 识别物联网环境中传统安全方法的局限性。
• 提出一个适用于物联网部署的安全、私有且轻量级的基于 BC 的架构。
• 展示一个带有智能家居、覆盖网络和云存储的分层设计，用以协调数据交易。

提出的方法

• 提出一个分层架构，在不同网络层级使用不同类型的区块链来进行交易。
• 将分布式信任方法纳入以保持整个拓扑的去中心化。
• 在保持大部分安全与隐私优势的同时消除 BC 开销。
• 将该架构应用于智能家居案例研究，代表更广泛物联网应用。
• 在常见威胁模型下对安全性和隐私进行定性评估。

实验结果

研究问题

• RQ1 如何将区块链技术适应于物联网，以在不产生过高开销的情况下解决隐私和安全问题？
• RQ2 分层的多层 BC 方法是否能够在物联网中以更低的资源消耗提供等效的安全性和隐私收益？
• RQ3 哪些具体的威胁模型威胁物联网系统，提出的架构如何缓解它们？
• RQ4 分布式信任在物联网各层（智能家居、覆盖网络、云端）中维持去中心化是否可行？

主要发现

• 与传统 BC 部署相比，分层的基于 BC 的物联网架构可以在降低开销的同时提升安全性和隐私。
• 在不同网络层级使用不同类型的区块链，以适应层级中事务发生的位置。
• 分布式信任机制有助于在物联网拓扑中维持去中心化。
• 在常见威胁模型下的定性评估表明在保护物联网应用方面有效。