Trustworthy Blockchain Gateways for Resource-Constrained Clients and IoT Devices
Resource-constrained blockchain clients and the Internet of Things (IoT) devices pose limitations in terms of processing and storing the entire blockchain ledger and mining blocks. Such clients and devices rely on a view of the blockchain provided by full nodes acting as gateways. However, gateway n...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IEEE
2021-01-01
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| Series: | IEEE Access |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9547294/ |
| _version_ | 1818606351580921856 |
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| author | Mazin Debe Khaled Salah Raja Jayaraman Ibrar Yaqoob Junaid Arshad |
| author_facet | Mazin Debe Khaled Salah Raja Jayaraman Ibrar Yaqoob Junaid Arshad |
| author_sort | Mazin Debe |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Resource-constrained blockchain clients and the Internet of Things (IoT) devices pose limitations in terms of processing and storing the entire blockchain ledger and mining blocks. Such clients and devices rely on a view of the blockchain provided by full nodes acting as gateways. However, gateway nodes sometimes can provide a distorted view of the blockchain that makes lightweight clients vulnerable to the eclipse attack. When under such an attack, a client cannot differentiate between a forked view of the blockchain and the legitimate blockchain ledger leading to fatal consequences and huge losses incurred. In this paper, we propose a data attestation solution that employs full nodes as validators to attest the responses reported by gateways of lightweight nodes. We leverage smart contracts to give lightweight clients confidence in the data reported as they are unable to validate it from the blockchain network themselves. The system governs the attestation process that comprises submitting attestation requests, approving them, recording the response of validators, and manage payments. Clients can, thereafter, provide their feedback about the validator/gateway performance in the form of a reputation score. We present the proposed system architecture and describe its implementation on the Ethereum blockchain network. We evaluate the proposed solution with respect to functionality testing, cost of execution, and security analysis of the developed smart contracts. We make our smart contracts code and testing scripts publicly available. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-16T14:09:29Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-fad1296dffd14302b1bf864f0d418baa |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2169-3536 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-16T14:09:29Z |
| publishDate | 2021-01-01 |
| publisher | IEEE |
| record_format | Article |
| series | IEEE Access |
| spelling | doaj.art-fad1296dffd14302b1bf864f0d418baa2022-12-21T22:28:49ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362021-01-01913287513288710.1109/ACCESS.2021.31151509547294Trustworthy Blockchain Gateways for Resource-Constrained Clients and IoT DevicesMazin Debe0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6328-271XKhaled Salah1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2310-2558Raja Jayaraman2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2749-2688Ibrar Yaqoob3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8438-3429Junaid Arshad4https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0424-9498Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesDepartment of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesDepartment of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesDepartment of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesSchool of Computing and Digital Technology, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, U.K.Resource-constrained blockchain clients and the Internet of Things (IoT) devices pose limitations in terms of processing and storing the entire blockchain ledger and mining blocks. Such clients and devices rely on a view of the blockchain provided by full nodes acting as gateways. However, gateway nodes sometimes can provide a distorted view of the blockchain that makes lightweight clients vulnerable to the eclipse attack. When under such an attack, a client cannot differentiate between a forked view of the blockchain and the legitimate blockchain ledger leading to fatal consequences and huge losses incurred. In this paper, we propose a data attestation solution that employs full nodes as validators to attest the responses reported by gateways of lightweight nodes. We leverage smart contracts to give lightweight clients confidence in the data reported as they are unable to validate it from the blockchain network themselves. The system governs the attestation process that comprises submitting attestation requests, approving them, recording the response of validators, and manage payments. Clients can, thereafter, provide their feedback about the validator/gateway performance in the form of a reputation score. We present the proposed system architecture and describe its implementation on the Ethereum blockchain network. We evaluate the proposed solution with respect to functionality testing, cost of execution, and security analysis of the developed smart contracts. We make our smart contracts code and testing scripts publicly available.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9547294/BlockchainEthereumIoTgatewaystrustlightweight nodes |
| spellingShingle | Mazin Debe Khaled Salah Raja Jayaraman Ibrar Yaqoob Junaid Arshad Trustworthy Blockchain Gateways for Resource-Constrained Clients and IoT Devices IEEE Access Blockchain Ethereum IoT gateways trust lightweight nodes |
| title | Trustworthy Blockchain Gateways for Resource-Constrained Clients and IoT Devices |
| title_full | Trustworthy Blockchain Gateways for Resource-Constrained Clients and IoT Devices |
| title_fullStr | Trustworthy Blockchain Gateways for Resource-Constrained Clients and IoT Devices |
| title_full_unstemmed | Trustworthy Blockchain Gateways for Resource-Constrained Clients and IoT Devices |
| title_short | Trustworthy Blockchain Gateways for Resource-Constrained Clients and IoT Devices |
| title_sort | trustworthy blockchain gateways for resource constrained clients and iot devices |
| topic | Blockchain Ethereum IoT gateways trust lightweight nodes |
| url | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9547294/ |
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