Securing IoT Firmware Dispatch Systems with Blockchain

Vince Biró, Wei-Yang Chiu, Weizhi Meng

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices have become a prevalent part of everyday life, making the need for IoT firmware security greater than ever. Firmware dispatch systems play a crucial role in maintaining the secure operations of IoT devices, where a compromise on the integrity of dispatches may simply ruin an IoT device. Hence it is essential to have robust solutions to safeguard such systems. With the advent of blockchain and Web3 technologies, there are new options for tackling security-related challenges. Blockchain provides a tamper-proof, secure, and fully distributed protocol, making it an excellent choice for a firmware dispatch system. In this work, we explore the existing blockchain-based solutions for distributing IoT firmware updates, and then propose a secure firmware dispatch system for IoT devices using Ethereum. Our system employs Web3.Storage, with a hosted implementation of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol. In the evaluation, we demonstrate that our designed architecture is fast, reliable, and scalable by offering a firmware integrity validation. It can benefit a wide range of manufacturers who intend to increase the security of their IoT devices.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain)
PublisherIEEE
Publication date2023
Pages229-238
ISBN (Print)979-8-3503-1930-9
ISBN (Electronic)979-8-3503-1929-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Event2023 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain) - Danzhou, China
Duration: 17 Dec 202321 Dec 2023

Conference

Conference2023 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain)
Country/TerritoryChina
CityDanzhou
Period17/12/202321/12/2023

Keywords

  • Blockchain
  • Dispatch system
  • Internet of Things
  • IPFS
  • Hypermedia protocol
  • Ethereum

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Securing IoT Firmware Dispatch Systems with Blockchain'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this