Towards Blockchain-Based Secure Storage and Trusted Data Sharing Scheme for IoT Environment

Nowadays, cloud-based storage systems play a vital role in IoT data storage, processing, and sharing. Despite its contribution, the current cloud-based architecture may cause severe data leakage or jeopardize user privacy. Meanwhile, the cloud-based architecture heavily relies on a trusted third-party auditor (TPA) and runs in a centralized control manner. However, the TPA may not be a completely trustworthy entity, and a single point of failure might cause the centralized system to collapse. Fortunately, with the advent of blockchain technology, the decentralized storage model has gained popularity. A decentralized storage system successfully eradicates the rule of TPA, solves the problem of a single point of failure, and has many advantages over a centralized control architecture, such as low storage prices and high throughput. This study offers a blockchain-based decentralized distributed storage and sharing scheme that provides end-to-end encryption and fine-grained access control. In our proposed IoTChain model, fine-grained permission is based on attribute-based access control (A-BAC) policy by employing the Ethereum blockchain as an auditable access control layer. Smart contracts are tailored for the IoTChain model, which combines the Ethereum blockchain and the interplanetary file system (IPFS). We used an advanced encryption standard (AES) for encryption and the elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol for secret key sharing between data owners and users. Also, the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism is replaced with a proof-of-authority (PoA) to minimize system transaction cost and boost system throughput. Additionally, our solution has been tested on the Ethereum official test network Rinkeby, and the results demonstrate that our approach is realistic and economical on the IoT data.

Automated summary

The paper introduces a blockchain-based decentralized distributed storage and sharing scheme that offers end-to-end encryption and fine-grained access control. The proposed IoTChain model uses attribute-based access control (A-BAC) policy, Ethereum blockchain, and IPFS, with advanced encryption standards and key exchange protocols. The system uses proof-of-authority (PoA) consensus to reduce transaction costs and boost throughput.