Skip to main content

Blockchain for Ensuring Security , Privacy , and Trust in IoT Environments: The State of the Art

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Book cover Security, Privacy and Trust in the IoT Environment

Abstract

Blockchain (BC) is a framework that saves data records in adjacent blocks that are linked together using cryptography. It is in the form of a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of data records that are validated by the nodes participating in the chain. BC presents a decentralized solution, which does not require a third-party organization in the middle for achieving the intra-blocks trust. The information about every transaction ever completed in a blockchain is shared and always available to all nodes. This attribute makes the system more transparent than centralized transactions. The goal of blockchain technology is to provide anonymity, security, privacy, and transparency to all its users. This chapter aims to provide the state-of-the-art information on the use of blockchain technology for securing IoT environments. The advantages and limitations of BC technology for IoT architectures are analyzed. Conceptual blockchain-based IoT architectures for seven different cases are also presented. These being: supply chain management and manufacturing , smart cities , smart homes , healthcare IoT systems, identity management and access control systems, electricity market systems, and insurance systems . The most relevant future challenges for the application of blockchain to IoT environments are also discussed.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 139.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 179.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 179.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Nakamoto S (2008) Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

  2. Blockchain Hub (2018) Beginners guide to blockchain. https://blockchainhub.net/blockchain-intro. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  3. Banafa A (2017, Jan) IoT and blockchain convergence: benefits and challenges. IEEE, Internet of things

    Google Scholar 

  4. Young J (2018) Use of blockchain in major industries by numbers: retail, manufacturing, finance, and others. https://cointelegraph.com/news/use-of-blockchain-in-major-industries-by-numbers-retail-manufacturing-finance-and-others. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  5. Katz J, Lindell Y (2007) Introduction to modern cryptography. Chapman and Hall/CRC

    Google Scholar 

  6. Gupta S, Sadoghi M (2018) Blockchain transaction processing. In: Encyclopedia of big data technologies, pp 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63962-8_333-1

    Google Scholar 

  7. Angin P, Mert MB, Mete O, Ramazanli A, Sarica K, Gungoren B (2018, June) A blockchain-based decentralized security architecture for IoT. In: International conference on Internet of things. Springer, Cham, pp 3–18

    Google Scholar 

  8. Van der Meulen R (2015, Nov 10) Gartner says 6.4 billion connected ‘things’ will be in use in 2016, Up 30 percent from 2015. Gartner press release. www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3165317. Accessed 22 Dec 2018

  9. Waterman S (2016, Nov 17) Industry to government: hands off IoT security. Fedscoop. https://www.fedscoop.com/industry-to-government-hands-off-iot-security/. Accessed 19 Dec 2018

  10. Banafa A (2016) A secure model of IoT with blockchain. OpenMind. https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/a-secure-model-of-iot-with-blockchain/. Accessed 21 Dec 2018

  11. Coward J (2016) Meet the visionary who brought blockchain to the industrial IoT. IOT world news. Accessed 14 Dec

    Google Scholar 

  12. Petracek N (2018, July 18) Is blockchain the way to save IoT. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/07/18/is-blockchain-the-way-to-save-iot/#517d28f55a74. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  13. Huckle S, Bhattacharya R, White M, Beloff N (2016) Internet of things, blockchain and shared economy applications. Procedia Comput Sci 98:461–466

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Huh S, Cho S, Kim S (2017) Managing IoT devices using blockchain platform. In: 2017 19th international conference on advanced communication technology (ICACT). IEEE, pp 464–467

    Google Scholar 

  15. Ouaddah A, Abou Elkalam A, Ait Ouahman A (2016) FairAccess: a new blockchain-based access control framework for the Internet of things. Secur Commun Netw 9(18):5943–5964

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Stavrou A, Voas J (2017) Verified time. Computer 50(3):78–82

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Dorri A, Kanhere SS, Jurdak R, Gauravaram P (2017) LSB: a lightweight scalable blockchain for IoT security and privacy. arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.02969

  18. Sharma PK, Singh S, Jeong YS, Park JH (2017) DistBlockNet: a distributed blockchains-based secure SDN architecture for IoT networks. IEEE Commun Mag 55(9):78–85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Park J, Kim K (2017, Mar) TM-coin: trustworthy management of TCB measurements in IoT. In: 2017 IEEE international conference on pervasive computing and communications workshops (PerCom Workshops). IEE, pp 654–659

    Google Scholar 

  20. Zhang Y, Wen J (2017) The IoT electric business model: using blockchain technology for the Internet of things. Peer-To-Peer Netw Appl 10(4):983–994

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Outchakoucht A, Hamza ES, Leroy JP (2017) Dynamic access control policy based on blockchain and machine learning for the Internet of things. Int J Adv Comput Sci Appl 8(7):417–424

    Google Scholar 

  22. Lee B, Lee JH (2017) Blockchain-based secure firmware update for embedded devices in an Internet of things environment. J Supercomput 73(3):1152–1167

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Brown J (2017, January 30) Companies forge cooperative to explore blockchain-based IoT security. https://www.ciodive.com/news/companies-forge-cooperative-to-explore-blockchain-based-iot-security/435007. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  24. Song JC, Demir MA, Prevost JJ, Rad P (2018, June) Blockchain design for trusted decentralized IoT networks. In 2018 13th annual conference on system of systems engineering (SoSE). IEEE, pp 169–174

    Google Scholar 

  25. Hyperledger—Open Source Blockchain Technologies. (n.d.). https://www.hyperledger.org. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  26. Perlman L (2017) ITU-T focus group digital financial services: distributed ledger technologies and financial inclusion. https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/dfs/Documents/201703/ITU_FGDFS_Report-on-DLT-and-Financial-Inclusion.pdf

  27. Mills D, Wang K, Malone B, Ravi A, Marquardt J, Chen C, Badev A, Brezinski T, Fahy L, Liao K, Kargenian V, Ellithorpe M, Ng W, Baird M (2016) Distributed ledger technology in payments, clearing, and settlement. Finance and economics discussion series 2016–095. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2016.095

  28. Open Architecture (2013, Mar 12) https://www.gartner.com/it-glossary/open-architecture. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  29. How does Bitcoin work? (n.d.). https://bitcoin.org/en/how-it-works. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  30. Davis N (2018) Blockchain for the connected home: combining security and flexibility. http://labs.comcast.com/blockchain-for-the-connected-home-combining-security-and-flexibility. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  31. Dorri A, Kanhere SS, Jurdak R, Gauravaram P (2017) Blockchain for IoT security and privacy: the case study of a smart home . In: 2017 IEEE international conference on pervasive computing and communications workshops (PerCom Workshops). IEEE, pp 618–623

    Google Scholar 

  32. Meeting of the minds (2018) Using blockchain in smart cities. https://meetingoftheminds.org/using-blockchain-in-smart-cities-29319. Accessed 22 Dec 2018

  33. Sharma PK, Moon SY, Park JH (2017) Block-VN: a distributed blockchain based vehicular network architecture in smart city. J Inf Process Syst 13(1):84

    Google Scholar 

  34. Kshetri N, Voas J (2018) Blockchain-enabled e-voting. IEEE Softw 35(4):95–99

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. IOTA (2018) The next generation of distributed ledger technology. https://www.iota.org/. Accessed 31 Dec 2018

  36. Buck J (2018) Taipei partners with IOTA to become a blockchain-powered smart city . https://cointelegraph.com/news/taipei-partners-with-iota-to-become-a-blockchain-powered-smart-city. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  37. Biswas K, Muthukkumarasamy V (2016) Securing smart cities using blockchain technology. In: IEEE 14th international conference on smart city on high performance computing and communications. IEEE, pp 1392–1393

    Google Scholar 

  38. Catalini (2018, Mar 07) How blockchain applications will move beyond finance. https://hbr.org/2017/03/how-blockchain-applications-will-move-beyond-finance. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  39. Not just for cryptocash: how blockchain tech could help secure IoT. (n.d.). https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/blog/IoT-Agenda/Not-just-for-cryptocash-How-blockchain-tech-could-help-secure-IoT. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  40. Hyperledger (2018) Hyperledger Indy. https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/hyperledger-indy. Accessed 31 Dec 2018

  41. Dickson B (2016, Oct 30) Blockchain could help fix IoT security after DDoS attack. https://venturebeat.com/2016/10/29/blockchain-could-help-fix-iot-security-after-ddos-attack. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  42. Azaria A, Ekblaw A, Vieira T, Lippman A (2016, Aug) Medrec: using blockchain for medical data access and permission management. In: International conference on open and big data (OBD). IEEE, pp 25–30

    Google Scholar 

  43. Mediledger (2018) The MediLedger project: an open and decentralized network for the pharmaceutical supply chain. https://www.mediledger.com/. Accessed 18 Dec 2018

  44. Aigang platform (n.d.) (2019) https://aigang.network/. Accessed 31 Dec 2018

  45. Fritz M (n.d.) The road to a digital upgrade in the enterprise. https://blogs.oracle.com/oraclepartners/the-road-to-a-digital-upgrade-in-the-enterprise. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  46. IDC FutureScape (2018) Worldwide Internet of things 2017 predictions. https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=US40755816. Accessed 25 Dec 2018

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sevgi Özkan Yildirim .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Erdem, A., Yildirim, S.Ö., Angin, P. (2019). Blockchain for Ensuring Security , Privacy , and Trust in IoT Environments: The State of the Art. In: Mahmood, Z. (eds) Security, Privacy and Trust in the IoT Environment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18075-1_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18075-1_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-18074-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-18075-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics