The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLVI-4/W5-2021

The 6th International Conference on Smart City Applications, 27–29 October 2021, Karabuk University, Virtual Safranbolu, Turkey

SECURING IoT WITH BLOCKCHAIN

Kazım Onur Toka1[0000-0003-2070-9036], Yılmaz Dikilitaş1[0000-0002-8892-574X],

Talha Oktay1[0000-0001-8939-4672] and Ahmet Sayar1[0000-0002-6335-459X]

1Department of Computer Engineering, Kocaeli University, Kocaeli, Turkey – ([email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected])

KEY WORDS: IoT, Blockchain, Hyperledger, IoT Security, IoT with Blockchain.

ABSTRACT:

IoT is becoming ubiquitous in industry, homes, cities, literally in every aspect of our daily lives. Securing IoT-based systems is
difficult because of deficiencies in the very nature of IoT devices such as limited battery power, processing, and storage, etc.
Blockchain is a new approach used to securely record transactions and offers potential solutions to computer and internet security
issues such as confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, authorization, and accountability. Blockchain, as a decentralized
ledger consisting of interconnected blocks, can remedy most of the security deficiencies of heavily IoT based systems. The
Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network used in this study provides confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, and data security
for data obtained from IoT devices. Widely used IoT data transfer MQTT protocol is included in the proposed approach. The
approach is demonstrated in a simple demo Hyperledger network with simulated IoT devices. The proposed approach is discussed in
terms of network security dimensions. Based on the features of the Hyperledger Blockchain network, it is displayed that the IoT
security deficiencies can largely be remedied with the proposed approach.

1. INTRODUCTION offers security and privacy (Rui et al. 2019). Blockchain

technologies can provide a high level of security, privacy,
Today, IoT devices are everywhere, in smart homes, wearable authentication, and device authorization for the data to be
devices, smart cities, healthcare, automotive, environment, recorded and can be used to secure systems that use IoT
smart water, and grid applications, etc. IoT solutions are used devices.
in many areas for optimizing production and transitioning
industries to information technologies. Approximately 46 However, there is no clear solution in the literature on how to
billion devices will be connected to the Internet of Things by securely transfer data from IoT devices to a blockchain. The
the end of 2021, according to Juniper Research (Juniper main motivation in our study is that the data transfer between
Research, 2021). these two environments can be done securely with the
integration of IoT and blockchain.
Despite these great opportunities offered by IoT technologies,
ensuring the reliability and accuracy of the data obtained from The outline of the study is as follows, summary information
these technologies remains a problem that has not yet been fully about IoT and blockchain is included in section II. In section III,
addressed. It is unfortunately easy to capture and manipulate the the work done on IoT and blockchain integration is
data transmitted by many IoT devices. Typically, an IoT device summarized. In section IV, the proposed architecture for
is more vulnerable to attacks as it is limited by information securely integration IoT and blockchain is discussed and section
processing, storage, and networking capacity (Jyoti and V provides conclusions.
Amarsinh, 2017). It is deemed necessary usage of different
designs, different interfaces, or different environments to ensure
secure communication. 2. BACKGROUND

It is generally regarded as difficult to assure that the data 2.1 Internet of Things (IoT)
provided from IoT devices has not been tampered with or
changed in any way (Alfonso, 2018) specifically in The density of digital data in our lives has started to increase
architectures where IoT devices send data to shared servers that very rapidly because of continuously online devices. Since these
keep all records centrally. data are actively transferred over the internet, they are always
accessible. The technology that enables this intensive data
Blockchain can be a solution to the security problems of IoT transfer between human beings and devices is called IoT.
systems (Dikilitas et al. 2021). In the most basic terms, a
blockchain can be defined as a decentralized and distributed Standard IoT devices are heterogeneous devices with embedded
ledger technology that contains interconnected records. A sensors that connect over a network. IoT devices are uniquely
record can be added to the blockchain ledger with the approval identified in the network. These devices are generally designed
of the majority of all peers on the network. Blockchain's to operate with small memory, limited processing capacity, and
interconnected blocks nature ensures that the data is protected low power. Networks act as a bridge between IoT devices and
from tampering. This decentralized structure of the blockchain users.

IoT devices by nature are small memory, low powered, and

limited processing capacity; faced with security weaknesses in

This contribution has been peer-reviewed.

https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVI-4-W5-2021-529-2021 | © Author(s) 2021. CC BY 4.0 License. 529
 The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLVI-4/W5-2021
The 6th International Conference on Smart City Applications, 27–29 October 2021, Karabuk University, Virtual Safranbolu, Turkey

the fields of identity verification, authorization, and accounting. Smart contracts are pieces of code that define the business
However, IoT's seven-tier architecture (Jasmin, 2016) allows processes between stakeholders in blockchain networks.
participants to develop IoT devices that are compatible with
each other by determining layers in which certain types of Blockchain technology is used on many digital currencies
transactions can be optimized. including widespread Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrencies
using smart contracts. In the field of corporate blockchain
applications, Hyperledger Fabric network is frequently used.

3. RELATED WORKS

In this section, relevant studies about IoT, blockchain

integration, and security will be discussed.
Figure 1. Architecture of MQTT
At (Nejc, 2019), an approach is presented to integrate IoT and
There are protocols for to transfer of data received from IoT blockchain technologies into supply chain processes. The study
devices (Nitin, 2017). The most widely used one is MQTT. It is proposes a Blockchain-based distributed logistics platform that
an OASIS standard messaging protocol for the IoT. It is involves adding actors in a supply chain to the system as a node.
designed as an extremely light publish-subscribe messaging A virtual copy of a transported property is created with IoT
transport ideal for connecting remote devices with a small code devices on the proposed platform. Other data such as the
space and minimal network bandwidth. location, temperature, and humidity of the transported goods are
monitored via the virtual copy and recorded on the blockchain.
The MQTT structure consists of three basic components:
"publisher", "subscriber" and "broker". MQTT Publisher posts a At (Thomas, 2017), It is explained that the most important
message under a specific topic via the MQTT broker. Likewise, benefit in saving data from IoT devices to a blockchain network
the MQTT subscriber can access all the messages published using smart contracts is that these data can be evaluated and
under this topic by subscribing to the topic published by the reported to the sender or receiver automatically. The smart
MQTT publisher via the MQTT broker. contract running in the system corrects the temperature values
coming from the sensors and saves them to the blockchain.
2.2 Blockchain Technology Mobile clients communicate with the server using the REST
API. Customers can control the data in the system through these
Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, immutable and mobile clients.
shared ledger that keeps track of assets and transactions on a
peer-to-peer network (P2P) (Nabil and Claus, 2018). At (Kristi´an, 2019), a blockchain-based network monitoring
and management architecture is proposed. The administrators in
One of the most important concepts of blockchain is blocks. the network indirectly control the network devices by recording
Each block contains an encrypted value containing the block the changes in the device configuration on the blockchain,
information preceding it. where they control the updates in the configurations of the
network devices.
Transactions are a small task unit usually stored in public
records within a block. Records are usually added to the At (Seyoung et al. 2017), It is aimed to control and configure
blockchain after obtaining the approval of the majority of users IoT devices using blockchain. The proposed system includes a
participating in the blockchain network (Gareth and Efstathios, smartphone and three raspberry pi. The three raspberry pi in the
2015). The data processed in the distributed ledger is recorded system act as a meter, air conditioner, and light bulb,
in the ledger with the consent of all participants in the network. respectively. The user can adjust the policy in the system via the
This is called a consensus mechanism. smartphone. Configuration changes made via the smart device
are recorded on the Ethereum network.
The first of the features that make Blockchain valuable is the
decentralization structure. In a blockchain network, data appears At (Mayra et al. 2016), It is pointed out that blockchain's
as a distributed ledger database. The same data are kept decentralized and change-resistant nature can be used to solve
simultaneously on all other stakeholders in the network. With some of the problems faced by the nature of IoT. The authors
all these features, blockchain technology provides the highest present a cloud and fog-based solution to solve this problem. In
level of traceability by all stakeholders. the study, the Intel Edison Arduino card is used as the IoT
Another important contribution of blockchain technology is the device, and the blockchain works separately on the fog and the
transparency it adds to business processes. This increases the cloud. In the experiments, the IoT device writes data to the
trust between stakeholders and ensures accountability. It allows blockchain via a Python server.
all stakeholders to monitor the blockchain network in real-time.
Studies in the literature are generally based on IoT and
Data privacy is an important feature of restricted blockchain Blockchain integration. However, there is no clarification on
networks. In restricted blockchain networks, only users how to ensure security in data transfer, which is one of the
authorized by the node's administrator can view data. This biggest disadvantages of IoT systems. We propose a solution to
ensures that data coming to the blockchain network is protected. this problem in section IV.
The public key structure of blockchain networks, which protects
data modification, largely eliminates integrity problems. The 4. PROPOSED APPROACH
participants and the consensus mechanism of a blockchain
network are other factors that increase data security. In this section, a simple approach is presented that integrates
IoT devices to any blockchain network securely. In our
research, Hyperledger Fabric is used as the blockchain network.

This contribution has been peer-reviewed.

https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVI-4-W5-2021-529-2021 | © Author(s) 2021. CC BY 4.0 License. 530
 The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLVI-4/W5-2021
The 6th International Conference on Smart City Applications, 27–29 October 2021, Karabuk University, Virtual Safranbolu, Turkey

In the proposed architecture presented at figure 2, an IoT device Confidentiality is ensured with the solutions regarding privacy
via its sensors captures the data of interest and publish to control and data security offered by the Hyperledger Fabric
MQTT message broker. The message broker distributes the network (IBM, 2021). Hyperledger Fabric only allows
received messages to the registered subscribers. In our model transactions between predefined users via authorized channels
implementation "Mosca MQTT broker" is used. The subscriber which prevents unauthorized users are prevented from making
of the data of interest is an application within the blockchain transactions within the network.
network which is defined as an authenticated user to the
blockchain node. This application creates the necessary The integrity of the data is ensured by keeping data of the
transaction on the Hyperledger network based on received data. network in distributed databases called ledgers. Blockchain
ledgers consist of all of the transactions called blocks and that
are linked together in a chain. This connection is achieved by a
block storing a hash value containing the information of the
preceding block itself. If a peer wants to intervene directly in
the Hyperledger Fabric state database, the data cannot be
changed, as other peers will not be convinced that this is the
case. Having these distributed databases in all stakeholders
ensures data integrity.

In terms of Availability, Hyperledger network provides

resilience to failures with its distributed nature and the data will
be kept continuously accessible for authorized users. In multiple
peers carrying the ledger databases, the data will be available
over other healthy peers even when one peer is inaccessible.
Hyperledger network also provides a high count of transactions
per unit time by using cheaper commodity hardware
(Hyperledger, 2021).

Identification, Authentication, and Authorization The MQTT

Figure 2. IoT Integration to Hyperledger Network publisher running on the Hyperledger Fabric API server must
transact with a previously defined authorized user within the
This approach is simulated in a simple hyperledger network Hyperledger Fabric organizations. At the same time, additional
setup. Four Hyperledger Fabric organizations are created on authentication is provided by using the username and password
four separate physical machines. Organizations communicate fields provided by MQTT for authorization. With this
with each other via Docker Swarm Network. Four organizations identification provided by the Hyperledger Fabric user
operate the processes in the network with a channel policy in identification and MQTT protocol, the data sent through the
which they are participants. Three of the four organizations protocol will be authenticated, and unauthorized access to the
were established to implement the relevant business processes, data will be prevented. In addition, the optional MQTT TLS
the fourth organization on the network is Orderer. Organizations support makes it easy to encrypt messages and authenticate
in the network each create users to execute the defined clients using authentication protocols.
processes through smart contracts.
In terms of Accountability, all elements that will operate in the
Simulated IOT devices in figure 3 in between organizations proposed architecture will be able to perform these operations
trigger events that inform the network of state changes via with a specific identity, and these transactions will be
collected data from sensors. The state changes can be applied to accountable by answering questions such as from which IoT
many subjects of interest such as production, transfer of goods device, when and from which Hyperledger Fabric user the
in supply-chain processes as production of a material, transfer transaction was made.
of materials. 5. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

IoT is becoming ubiquitous in industry, homes, cities, literally

in every aspect of our daily lives. Securing IoT-based systems is
difficult because of deficiencies in the very nature of IoT
devices such as limited processing, storage, etc.

Blockchain is a decentralized ledger consisting of

interconnected blocks that can remedy most of the security
deficiencies of IoT-based systems. The Hyperledger Fabric
blockchain network provides confidentiality, data integrity,
Figure 3. Transaction request flow authentication, and security for data obtained from IoT devices.
Widely used IoT data transfer MQTT protocol is included in the
With this approach, it is ensured that the data received from the proposed architecture. The proposed approach is demonstrated
IoT device is transferred to the network over a secure transfer in a simple Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network with three
layer through the Hyperledger Fabric user, defined for the IoT organizations and simulated IoT devices. Our approach is
device, preventing unauthorized access and modification of the discussed in terms of dimensions of network security. Based on
data. The proposed approach satisfies IoT security problems as the features of Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network and the
discussed below in terms of dimensions of network security. proposed architecture, it is demonstrated that the IoT security
deficiencies can largely be remedied.

This contribution has been peer-reviewed.

https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVI-4-W5-2021-529-2021 | © Author(s) 2021. CC BY 4.0 License. 531
 The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLVI-4/W5-2021
The 6th International Conference on Smart City Applications, 27–29 October 2021, Karabuk University, Virtual Safranbolu, Turkey

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