Blockchain Based Protocol for IoT Device Authentication and Secure Communication

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) has gained a huge popularity during the recent years expanding into many fields and industries. The massive generation and collection of data by IoT devices also come with severe threats to security and privacy aspects. After understanding the importance of securing IoT device networks, many researchers have focused on developing solutions to protect IoT networks. However, providing complete security in IoT domain was challenging due to resource constraints and the lack of standards among devices. This project aims to create a more secure IoT device platform based on blockchain technology to protect IoT device networks. The principal objective of the project is divided into four sub-problems as IoT device authentication, data storage, data retrieval and secure communication. Then sub-problem solutions are designed according to industry accepted security standards and combined to create the complete solution based on blockchain technology. The solution has been implemented as a reusable platform using Java programming language with Spring framework to ensure that application is portable across all platforms that support Java Runtime Environment (JRE). The implemented aggregator application publishes a RESTful API which is consumed by connected IoT devices and other aggregators in the network. The aggregator applications are connected to build a distributed network which maintains the blockchain used for data storage. Finally, a comprehensive evaluation process has been performed by developing a prototype IoT network. The results obtained during the tests are analyzed to find the limitations of the solution and possible future enhancements. This thesis explains the background of IoT security domain and the design of a novel approach to secure IoT networks.