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Since the inception of the Internet of Things (IoT), we have adopted centralized architecture for decades. With the vastly growing number of IoT devices and gateways, this architecture struggles to cope with the high demands of state-of-the-art IoT services, which require scalable and responsive infrastructure. In response, decentralization becomes a considerable interest among IoT adopters. Following a similar trajectory, this paper introduces an IoT architecture re-work that enables three spheres of IoT workflows (i.e., computing, storage, and networking) to be run in a distributed manner. In particular, we employ the blockchain and smart contract to provide a secure computing platform. The distributed storage network maintains the saving of IoT raw data and application data. The software-defined networking (SDN) controllers and SDN switches exist in the architecture to provide connectivity across multiple IoT domains. We envision all of those services in the form of separate yet integrated peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay networks, which IoT actors such as IoT domain owners, IoT users, Internet Service Provider (ISP), and government can cultivate. We also present several IoT workflow examples showing how IoT developers can adapt to this new proposed architecture. Based on the presented workflows, the IoT computing can be performed in a trusted and privacy-preserving manner, the IoT storage can be made robust and verifiable, and finally, we can react to the network events automatically and quickly. Our discussions in this paper can be beneficial for many people ranging from academia, industries, and investors that are interested in the future of IoT in general.
Yustus Oktian; Elizabeth Witanto; Sang-Gon Lee. A Conceptual Architecture in Decentralizing Computing, Storage, and Networking Aspect of IoT Infrastructure. IoT 2021, 2, 205 -221.
AMA StyleYustus Oktian, Elizabeth Witanto, Sang-Gon Lee. A Conceptual Architecture in Decentralizing Computing, Storage, and Networking Aspect of IoT Infrastructure. IoT. 2021; 2 (2):205-221.
Chicago/Turabian StyleYustus Oktian; Elizabeth Witanto; Sang-Gon Lee. 2021. "A Conceptual Architecture in Decentralizing Computing, Storage, and Networking Aspect of IoT Infrastructure." IoT 2, no. 2: 205-221.
The Internet of Things (IoT) providers serve better IoT services each year while producing more IoT gateways and devices to expand their services. However, the security of the IoT ecosystem remains an afterthought for most IoT providers. This action results in many cybersecurity breaches in the field, most likely due to the lack of access control mechanisms. In this paper, we propose BorderChain, an access control framework based on blockchain for IoT endpoints. The security protocol guarantees two properties. First, our proposal assures IoT users and services that they communicate with approved IoT gateways as endpoints, holding verified IoT devices that they need. Second, BorderChain also generates access tokens that the IoT service and users can use to query IoT resources legitimately inside the IoT domains. As a result, the protocol can convince IoT domain owners that the system will only authorize IoT requests that they approve. We realize our protocol in the form of a smart contract to allow many IoT entities such as IoT domain owners, IoT devices, IoT gateways, IoT vendors, IoT services, IoT users, and Internet Service Provider (ISP) to collaborate in a unified environment. We then implement entities in BorderChain as Node JS applications connecting to the Ethereum blockchain as our peer-to-peer platform. Based on our performance evaluation using several Raspberry Pi hardware and our private server, we show that BorderChain can process entities’ authentication and authorization requests efficiently using all hardware resources. Finally, we release BorderChain for public use.
Yustus Eko Oktian; Sang-Gon Lee. BorderChain: Blockchain-Based Access Control Framework for the Internet of Things Endpoint. IEEE Access 2020, 9, 3592 -3615.
AMA StyleYustus Eko Oktian, Sang-Gon Lee. BorderChain: Blockchain-Based Access Control Framework for the Internet of Things Endpoint. IEEE Access. 2020; 9 ():3592-3615.
Chicago/Turabian StyleYustus Eko Oktian; Sang-Gon Lee. 2020. "BorderChain: Blockchain-Based Access Control Framework for the Internet of Things Endpoint." IEEE Access 9, no. : 3592-3615.
As the usage growth rate of Internet of Things (IoT) devices is increasing, various issues related to these devices need attention. One of them is the distribution of the IoT firmware update. The IoT devices’ software development does not end when the manufacturer sells the devices to the market. It still needs to be kept updated to prevent cyber-attacks. The commonly used firmware update process, over-the-air (OTA), mostly happens in a centralized way, in which the IoT devices directly download the firmware update from the manufacturer’s server. This central architecture makes the manufacturer’s server vulnerable to single-point-of-failure and latency issues that can delay critical patches from being applied to vulnerable devices. The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) is one organization contributing to providing interoperability services for IoT devices. In one of their subject areas, they provide a firmware update protocol for IoT devices. However, their firmware update process does not ensure the integrity and security of the patches. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based OCF firmware update for IoT devices. Specifically, we introduce two types of firmware update protocol, direct and peer-to-peer updates, integrated into OCF firmware update specifications. In the direct scenario, the device, through the IoT gateway, can download the new firmware update from the manufacturer’s server. Meanwhile, in the peer-to-peer scheme, the device can query the update from the nearby gateways. We implemented our protocol using Raspberry Pi hardware and Ethereum-based blockchain with the smart contracts to record metadata of the manufacturer’s firmware updates. We evaluated the proposed system’s performance by measuring the average throughput, the latency, and the firmware update distribution’s duration. The analysis results indicate that our proposal can deliver firmware updates in a reasonable duration, with the peer-to-peer version having a faster completion time than the direct one.
Elizabeth Nathania Witanto; Yustus Eko Oktian; Sang-Gon Lee; Jin-Heung Lee. A Blockchain-Based OCF Firmware Update for IoT Devices. Applied Sciences 2020, 10, 6744 .
AMA StyleElizabeth Nathania Witanto, Yustus Eko Oktian, Sang-Gon Lee, Jin-Heung Lee. A Blockchain-Based OCF Firmware Update for IoT Devices. Applied Sciences. 2020; 10 (19):6744.
Chicago/Turabian StyleElizabeth Nathania Witanto; Yustus Eko Oktian; Sang-Gon Lee; Jin-Heung Lee. 2020. "A Blockchain-Based OCF Firmware Update for IoT Devices." Applied Sciences 10, no. 19: 6744.
The state-of-the-art centralized Internet of Things (IoT) data flow pipeline has started aging since it cannot cope with the vast number of newly connected IoT devices. As a result, the community begins the transition to a decentralized pipeline to encourage data and resource sharing. However, the move is not trivial. With many instances allocating data or service arbitrarily, how can we guarantee the correctness of IoT data or processes that other parties offer. Furthermore, in case of dispute, how can the IoT data assist in determining which party is guilty of faulty behavior. Finally, the number of Service Level Agreement (SLA) increases as the number of sharing grows. The problem then becomes how we can provide a natural SLA generation and verification that we can automate instead of going through a manual and tedious legalization process through a trusted third party. In this paper, we explore blockchain solutions to answer those issues and propose continued data integrity services for IoT big data management. Specifically, we design five integrity protocols across three phases of IoT operations—during the transmission of IoT data (data in transit), when we physically store the data in the database (data at rest), and at the time of data processing (data in process). In each phase, we first lay out our motivations and survey the related blockchain solutions from the literature. We then use curated papers from our surveys as building blocks in designing the protocol. Using our proposal, we augment the overall value of IoT data and commands, generated in the IoT system, as they are now tamper-proof, verifiable, non-repudiable, and more robust.
Yustus Eko Oktian; Sang-Gon Lee; Byung-Gook Lee. Blockchain-Based Continued Integrity Service for IoT Big Data Management: A Comprehensive Design. Electronics 2020, 9, 1434 .
AMA StyleYustus Eko Oktian, Sang-Gon Lee, Byung-Gook Lee. Blockchain-Based Continued Integrity Service for IoT Big Data Management: A Comprehensive Design. Electronics. 2020; 9 (9):1434.
Chicago/Turabian StyleYustus Eko Oktian; Sang-Gon Lee; Byung-Gook Lee. 2020. "Blockchain-Based Continued Integrity Service for IoT Big Data Management: A Comprehensive Design." Electronics 9, no. 9: 1434.
Many researchers challenge the possibility of using blockchain and smart contracts to disrupt the Internet of Things (IoT) architecture because of their security and decentralization guarantees. However, the state-of-the-art blockchain architecture is not scalable enough to satisfy the requirements of massive data traffics in the IoT environment. The main reason for this issue is one needs to choose the consensus trade-off between either coping with a high throughput or a high number of nodes. Consequently, this issue prevents the applicability of blockchain for IoT use cases. In this paper, we propose a scalable two-tiered hierarchical blockchain architecture for IoT. The first tier is a Core Engine, which is based on a Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus to cope with a high throughput, that supervises the underlying subordinate engines (sub-engines) as its second tier. This second tier comprises of the Payment, Compute, and Storage Engine, respectively. We can deploy multiple instances of these sub-engines as many as we need and as local as possible near to the IoT domains, where IoT devices reside, to cope with a high number of nodes. Furthermore, to further extend the scalability of the proposed architecture, we also provide additional scalability features on the Core Engine such as request aggregation, request prioritization, as well as sub-engine parallelism. We implement all of our engines and expose them to IoT applications through the Engine APIs. With these APIs, developers can build and run IoT applications in our architecture. Our evaluation results show that our proposed features on the Core Engine can indeed enhance the overall performance of our architecture. Moreover, based on our proof-of-concept IoT car rental application, we also show that the interoperability between sub-engines through the Core Engine is possible, even when the particular sub-engine is under sub-engine parallelism.
Yustus Eko Oktian; Sang-Gon Lee; Hoon Jae Lee. Hierarchical Multi-Blockchain Architecture for Scalable Internet of Things Environment. Electronics 2020, 9, 1050 .
AMA StyleYustus Eko Oktian, Sang-Gon Lee, Hoon Jae Lee. Hierarchical Multi-Blockchain Architecture for Scalable Internet of Things Environment. Electronics. 2020; 9 (6):1050.
Chicago/Turabian StyleYustus Eko Oktian; Sang-Gon Lee; Hoon Jae Lee. 2020. "Hierarchical Multi-Blockchain Architecture for Scalable Internet of Things Environment." Electronics 9, no. 6: 1050.