LSB: A Lightweight Scalable Blockchain for IoT security and anonymity

Abstract

BlockChain (BC) has attracted tremendous attention due to its immutable nature and the associated security and privacy benefits. BC has the potential to overcome security and privacy challenges of Internet of Things (IoT). However, BC is computationally expensive, has limited scalability and incurs significant bandwidth overheads and delays which are not suited to the IoT context. We propose a tiered Lightweight Scalable BC (LSB) that is optimized for IoT requirements. We explore LSB in a smart home setting as a representative example for broader IoT applications. Low resource devices in a smart home benefit from a centralized manager that establishes shared keys for communication and processes all incoming and outgoing requests. LSB achieves decentralization by forming an overlay network where high resource devices jointly manage a public BC that ensures end-to-end privacy and security. The overlay is organized as distinct clusters to reduce overheads and the cluster heads are responsible for managing the public BC. LSB incorporates several optimizations which include algorithms for lightweight consensus, distributed trust and throughput management. Qualitative arguments demonstrate that LSB is resilient to several security attacks. Extensive simulations show that LSB decreases packet overhead and delay and increases BC scalability compared to relevant baselines.

A trust architecture for blockchain in IoT

“…The gateway reputation module tracks the long-term behaviour of gateway nodes and adapts the block validation depending on the reputation of the current gateway node. The proposed reputation module is inspired by [7], which receives frequent updates from the blockchain layer, where each node's honesty in block mining, B (G i ), is reported based on direct and indirect evidence, and used to update the node's reputation score. Our reputation module further integrates the data trust mechanism to the block validation process by validating: (1) the observation trust values assigned by the gateway, and (2) the sensor transactions reported in the block to update the reputation score of the gateway node.…”

“…In [7], the Lightweight Scalable Blockchain (LSB) that is optimized for IoT requirements has been proposed. Inspired by LSB, we propose a private blockchain for our trust architecture with a lightweight block generation mechanism, reputation-based adaptive block validation, and distributed consensus among blockchain nodes.…”

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

“…These blocks are linked together with cryptographic hash functions. To decrease the overhead of block generation, a distributed trust method is used …”

“…The tamper‐resistant nature of BC allows BC gateway to settle disputes between the users and IoT service providers Dorri et al proposed lightweight scalable blockchain (LSB) . In LSB, decentralization is achieved with the help of an overlay network, where devices with higher resources manage a public BC.…”

“…Lightweight BC for resource-constrained devices 45,51,57 Consensus protocols 45,66,71 Scalability and processing overheads 51,59,63 Latency and throughput 46,72,73 Energy efficiency 45,74,75 Identity 74, [76][77][78] Auditability and accountability 33,75,79 BC-based authentication schemes 35 data without learning anything from them. Their system consists of record nodes and light nodes.…”