Enhancing IoT Security and Privacy Using Distributed Ledgers with IOTA and the Tangle

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) devices currently rely on centralized, brokered communication models which call for a number of security flaws and threats. Privacy & security remain a challenge owing to the existing systems being centralized - creating a single point of failure. In this paper, we lay out an architecture for incorporating a concept similar to Blockchain - the technology that underpins the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies to provide decentralized security and privacy for IoT devices. Currently, the issue with most IoT devices is that they lack the processing power, storage and computational overhead to run consensus algorithms to be an active part of the Blockchain network. The current issue with the blockchain on the other hand, is its low scalability and low number of transactions per second. We present an innovative approach using a technology called IOTA. This addresses some of the most important problems with existing blockchain infrastructure such as being able to run on lightweight devices with constrained memory. We eliminate transaction fees and the concept of mining which requires a large amount of processing power to compete with other miners. IOTA's main component is the Tangle, a guided acyclic graph (DAG) for transaction storage. We discuss creation of two IoT applications on the tangle - a smart utility meter system and a smart car transaction system which are connected to internet through Low Power Wide Area IoT networks.