Blockchain-Based Whitelisting for Consumer IoT Devices and Home Networks
Diego M. Mendez Mena, Baijian Yang · 2018
Internet of Things (IoT) devices present different security challenges that have not been addressed yet and there is no clear commitment from stakeholders to do so. Such problems have become evident and IoT devices are targets of malicious actors that employ them as instruments to fulfill their nefarious purposes. Recent attacks to major Internet services have shown the real damage vulnerable devices can make when compromised. Many of the endangered devices sit in home-based environments with users that are not familiar with security or network best practices, which make them easy targets for bad actors. Therefore, there exists the need to find practical solutions using existing technologies that have been, so far, proven to be efficient, such as the blockchain. This paper implements a proof of concept to secure consumer/home-based IoT devices and the networks around them using blockchain technology powered by Ethereum. The results obtained support the idea of a whitelisting application based on the Ethereum protocol.