A blockchain-based smart home gateway architecture for preventing data forgery

Abstract

With the advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the proliferation of sensor technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) is now being widely used in smart home for the purposes of efficient resource management and pervasive sensing. In smart homes, various IoT devices are connected to each other, and these connections are centered on gateways. The role of gateways in the smart homes is significant, however, its centralized structure presents multiple security vulnerabilities such as integrity, certification, and availability. To address these security vulnerabilities, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based smart home gateway network that counters possible attacks on the gateway of smart homes. The network consists of three layers including device, gateway, and cloud layers. The blockchain technology is employed at the gateway layer wherein data is stored and exchanged in the form blocks of blockchain to support decentralization and overcome the problem from traditional centralized architecture. The blockchain ensures the integrity of the data inside and outside of the smart home and provides availability through authentication and efficient communication between network members. We implemented the proposed network on the Ethereum blockchain technology and evaluated in terms of standard security measures including security response time and accuracy. The evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed security solutions outperforms over the existing solutions.