A Blockchain-Based Key Management Protocol for Secure Device-to-Device Communication in the Internet of Things
Mohamed Ali Kandi, Djamel Eddine Kouicem, Hicham Lakhlef, Abdelmadjid Bouabdallah, Yacine Challal · 2020
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technology that aims to extend connectivity to all everyday devices. One of the main challenges that are slowing down its development is how to secure the Device-to-Device communication. Among all the security issues, the Key Management (KM) is one of the most challenging. The difficulty lies in the fact that most of the IoT devices suffer from a lack of resources. Although different protocols were proposed, most of them do not consider the dynamic nature of the IoT. Other solutions rely on a centralized entity to distribute the new keys upon a change in the network. However, this entity becomes a single point of failure and the main target of attacks. We propose a novel blockchain-based decentralized KM protocol. In addition to being resilient, scalable and dynamic, our solution uses the blockchain technology to securely distribute the KM on several entities.