Blockchain for IoT Access Control: Recent Trends and Future Research Directions

With the rapid development of wireless sensor networks, smart devices, and traditional information and communication technologies, there is tremendous growth in the use of Internet of Things (IoT) applications and services in our everyday life. IoT systems deal with high volumes of data. This data can be particularly sensitive, as it may include health, financial, location, and other highly personal information. Fine-grained security management in IoT demands effective access control. Several proposals discuss access control for the IoT, however, a limited focus is given to the emerging blockchain-based solutions for IoT access control. In this paper, we review the recent trends and critical needs for blockchain-based solutions for IoT access control. We identify several important aspects of blockchain, including decentralised control, secure storage and sharing information in a trustless manner, for IoT access control including their benefits and limitations. Finally, we note some future research directions on how to converge blockchain in IoT access control efficiently and effectively

Blockchain enabled fog structure to provide data security in IoT applications

International audienceIoT provides services by connecting smart devices to the Internet, and exploiting data generated by said devices. In such cases, if data is exposed, tampered or lost, the service would not behave correctly. In this article, we discuss data security in IoT applications across four dimensions: confidentiality, integrity, authenticity, non-repudiation and availability. We discuss how distributed ledger technology could be used to overcome these issues and propose to use a fog computing architecture as decentralized computational support to deploy the ledger

Vérification automatisée de la conformité de la confidentialité des applications dans les environnements Fog distribués

Fog computing, like any other new technology, raises concerns regarding the security and privacy of its users. In this thesis, we analyze the security of fog computing systems following a systematic approach and from multiple perspectives: device level, system level, and service level. For each perspective, we discuss the possible vulnerabilities that the system may have and highlight some possible solutions. One of the important identified assets in our study of fog platform’s security is the user’s personal data. Because of fog nodes’ proximate location to the user, fog applications have access to significant parts of their users’ personal data. Although applications expose a privacy policy describing how they handle users’ personal data, the compliance of applications to their privacy policy should not be taken for granted but verified. However, manually checking whether applications actually respect the claims made in their privacy policy is both error-prone and time-consuming. In this thesis, we argue that automated privacy compliance checking in fog environment is feasible and outline a research roadmap towards the development of such systems.Le “fog computing,” comme toute nouvelle technologie, soulève des inquiétudes des utilisateurs concernant la sécurité et la confidentialité. Dans cette thèse, nous analysons la sécurité des systèmes fog en suivant une approche systématique sous plusieurs angles : niveau matériel, niveau système et niveau service. Pour chaque perspective, nous discutons des vulnérabilités possibles que le système peut avoir et mettons en évidence quelques solutions possibles. L’un des aspects importants identifiés dans notre étude de la sécurité de la plate-forme fog est constitué des données personnelles de l’utilisateur. En raison de la proximité des nœuds fog par rapport à l’utilisateur, les applications fog ont accès à des parties importantes des données personnelles de leurs utilisateurs. Bien que les applications exposent une politique de confidentialité décrivant comment elles traitent les données personnelles des utilisateurs, la conformité des applications à leur politique de confidentialité ne doit pas être considérée comme acquise mais vérifiée expérimentalement. Cependant, vérifier manuellement si les applications respectent réellement les clauses formulées dans leur politique de confidentialité est à la fois sujet aux erreurs et chronophage. Dans cette thèse, nous montrons que la vérification automatisée de la conformité à la confidentialité dans un environnement fog est faisable, et présentons une feuille de route de recherche vers le développement de tels systèmes