Jul 2026· WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications· 0 citations· 9 references
TL;DR
A lightweight blockchain-based authentication framework for secure communication in Internet of Things (IoT) networks that integrates a permissioned blockchain with ECC-256 to provide mutual authentication, data integrity, and non-repudiation for resource-constrained IoT devices.
Abstract
We present a lightweight blockchain-based authentication framework for secure communication in Internet of Things (IoT) networks. The framework integrates a permissioned blockchain with ECC-256 (secp256r1, 128-bit security, NIST SP 800-57) to provide mutual authentication, data integrity, and non-repudiation for resource-constrained IoT devices. A novel Proof-of-Authentication (PoA) consensus mechanism eliminates energy-intensive mining. Formal verification via complete BAN logic derivations and AVISPA (OFMC and CL-AtSe, Dolev-Yao model) confirms resistance to replay, man-in-the-middle, Sybil, impersonation, compromised-gateway, and blockchain-manipulation attacks. Prototype results over 100 repeated trials (95% CI) on Raspberry Pi and ESP32 achieve 221.1±4.8 ms authentication latency and 30.1±0.9 mJ energy—42.6% and 37.8% lower than comparable schemes. Sub-linear latency scaling is demonstrated for networks up to 1000 devices.
By using PUF-generated responses as hardware-rooted seeds for mining and authentication, the framework removes the need for permanent secret storage and establishes a secure chain from device identity to consensus participation, making it suitable for practical deployment in industrial IoT, smart infrastructure, and other resource-constrained distributed systems.
B. Narayanapuram, J. Panda· IEEE Access· 0 citations
The ubiquity of lightweight resource-constrained Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices in 5G smart environments necessitates authentication protocols with the conflicting goals of being lightweight, highly secure, and having a decentralised credential management structure. Existing schemes use trusted third-party key distributors or heavyweight cryptographic primitives infeasible to IoT embedded hardware; they also fail to anchor device credentials on a permissioned blockchain ledger for tamper-evident credential revocation. In this work, we introduce BLAP-IoT: a Blockchain-Assisted Lightweight Authentication Protocol over live Hyperledger Fabric 2.5.9 that leverages elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman over P-256 curve, keyed MACs, and a three-message challenge-response protocol to provide injective mutual authentication with device key confirmation. Device credential commitments are stored on-chain to facilitate decentralised and efficient device revocation without revealing secrets on-chain. A formal security verification of the protocol in ProVerif 2.05 shows session-key secrecy, injective mutual authentication, and perfect forward secrecy in the presence of the Dolev-Yao attacker. The empirical evaluation of BLAP-IoT on measured P-256 primitives reports that the scheme achieves a total computation cost of 0.303 ms on constrained devices — up to 52% less than compared schemes, 1920-bit two-way communication overhead, and 0.218 mJ device energy consumption. The underlying blockchain layer sustains up to 277 transactions per second (TPS) in peak throughput, with end-to-end authentication latency less than 13 ms at 1000 concurrent devices.
Musaddak Maher, Abdul Zahra, Muhaned Al-Hashimi et al.· Journal of Intelligent Decis...· 0 citations
With the deep integration and widespread application of Internet of Things (IoT) technology across multiple fields, the security of cross-domain communication between intelligent terminal devices has become increasingly critical. Blockchain-based authentication and key agreement (AKA) protocols are a core solution for securing cross-domain communication in IoT. However, existing cross-domain AKA protocols suffer from shortcomings such as a lack of anonymity, an absence of perfect forward secrecy, and insufficient resistance to Ephemeral secret leakage (ESL) attacks. More importantly, most schemes record registration materials into the blockchain ledger without verifying their legitimacy, which may lead to impersonation attacks and privacy leakage risks. Meanwhile, when the blockchain is used only as a storage layer and does not participate in authentication, terminal devices may still suffer from high computational and communication overhead. To address these issues, this article proposes a blockchain- and certificate-based cross-domain AKA protocol for IoT. This protocol leverages elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) to achieve anonymity and resistance to key compromise impersonation (KCI) attacks. A two-stage smart contract for registration and authentication is designed to validate registration information on-chain and support identity authentication, thereby reducing overhead. Furthermore, the protocol combines ephemeral keys and long-term keys to generate session keys, ensuring perfect forward secrecy and resistance to ESL attacks. The proposed protocol satisfies the required security properties, which are verified through formal proof and ProVerif-based validation. Experimental and performance analyses show that the protocol has reduced total computation overhead, communication overhead, and energy consumption by at least 23.4%, 10.0%, and 10.0%, respectively. Additionally, the deployment and execution overheads of the smart contract are 472664 Gas and 32446 Gas, respectively. In a multidevice concurrent scenario, system latency remains stable between 335–355 ms, and the throughput is approximately 4.9 txn/s, demonstrating good system stability and scalability. Furthermore, high-concurrence tests on the Huawei Cloud ECS–Raspberry Pi 5 cloud–edge testbed show that the protocol verification process has a complexity close to $\mathcal {O}(1)$ . The protocol is suitable for resource-constrained and large-scale IoT cross-domain scenarios.
Min Jiang, Guoding Duan, Junhua Chen et al.· IEEE Internet of Things Jour...· 0 citations
As IoT deployments rapidly expand, ensuring comprehensive end-to-end security across identity, authorization, communication, integrity, and auditability is critical. This paper presents BISF-IoT, a Blockchain-Integrated Security Framework that utilizes a permissioned ledger as a tamper-evident control plane while keeping high-volume telemetry and raw logs off-chain. BISF-IoT integrates decentralized identity (DID) management, capability-based authorization with explicit revocation under a freshness bound Δ, and secure-channel identity binding for MQTT/CoAP edge devices. Formal game-based proofs establish five core security properties: DID authenticity, authorization soundness, revocation safety, tamper-evident logging, and auditable anomaly alert non-repudiation. Performance evaluation through simulation with up to 10,000 devices demonstrates near-linear scalability, processing up to 160,000 transactions per day with a scaling efficiency of ~0.90–1.00. Authorization latency increases moderately from 120 ms at 100 devices to 650 ms at 10,000 devices. Therefore, it remains within practical operational limits. Blockchain storage grows steadily at approximately 37–42 MB/day by storing compact Merkle commitments and security artifacts while avoiding raw data bloat. Meanwhile Log verification time exhibits sub-linear growth, with verification cost per entry decreasing from 0.200 ms to 0.055 ms as log size increases from 100 to 10,000 entries, reflecting efficient Merkle inclusion proof mechanisms. These results confirm BISF-IoT’s capability to provide scalable, secure, and verifiable control-plane operations suitable for large-scale IoT environments.
Shahid Imran, Kalsoom Safdar, Muhammad Usman Younus· International Journal of Inn...· 0 citations
The growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) has introduced significant security challenges, mainly due to the resource constraints of devices and the limitations of centralized architectures. This paper proposes a blockchain-based Zero-Trust framework for secure and scalable IoT systems. The approach is architecture-agnostic and combines decentralized identity management, hybrid data storage, and edge-assisted computation. To optimize resource usage, raw data are stored off-chain while cryptographic hashes are anchored on the blockchain, ensuring integrity and immutability. A Merkle tree structure is employed to aggregate data efficiently, reducing communication overhead and blockchain transaction costs. Experimental results demonstrate that lightweight cryptographic mechanisms, combined with Merkle-based aggregation, provide strong security guarantees with low energy consumption. The proposed framework achieves improved scalability, robustness, and efficiency, making it suitable for resource-constrained IoT environments.
Florian Bonelli, Alexandre dos Santos Roque, E. P. de Freitas· International Conference on...· 0 citations
A Blockchain-Based IoT Security Architecture that integrates distributed ledger technology, smart contracts, edge computing, and zero-trust authentication mechanisms to enhance security, privacy, and system reliability is proposed.
K. Venkatesh, Gorre Bharath, Jannu Subhas Chandra Boss· International Scientific Jou...· 0 citations