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Secure and Effective Implementation of an IOTA Light Node using STM32

Published: 10 November 2019 Publication History

Abstract

A major challenge in networked sensor systems and other IoT environments is addressing security. Vulnerabilities in those systems arise from poor physical security, unauthenticated devices, insecure firmware updates, insecure communication, and data corruption. In recent times Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), of which Blockchain is an instance, have been identified as a possible solution to some of these issues. The blokchain model genetically ensures decentralized security and privacy, and therefore could provide IoT systems with a trusted infrastructure for securely logging data or exchanging tokens without the necessity, and costs, of central servers. Blockchain is no panacea, either. IoT devices that get connected to a blockchain network must still be secured, in particular they must protect the confidentiality of the keys. This requires the embedded microcontroller to execute only authenticated firmware, with protections against software attacks, such as buffer overflows, and resistance against side-channel attacks. In addition, as confirmed from the scarcity of implementations reported in the literature, it is still not clear whether blockchain protocols can be implemented efficiently on resource-constrained IoT devices. In this work, also supported by a Demo, we show an example of secure IoT device that enables the functionalities of IOTA, a DLT specifically designed for the use in the IoT. In particular, we present a Light Node based on STM32 that implements all the cryptographic functions, IOTA specific operations and communication functions required to successfully publish transactions in the IOTA distributed ledger. Our implementations on microcontrollers (ARM Cortex-M) performs up to 22 times faster in terms of cycles and up to 4 times faster in absolute time with respect to the state-of-the-art implementation on a Raspberry PI 3B. Our Light Node also ensures protection of the stored private data and guarantees secure firmware update thanks to a suitable configuration of some security features provided by STM32 microcontrollers.

References

[1]
https://docs.iota.org
[2]
https://github.com/iotaledger
[3]
http://www.st.com/stm32nucleo
[4]
https://github.com/Come-from-Beyond/PearlDiver
[5]
A. Elsts, E. Mitskas and G. Oikonomou, Distributed Ledger Technology and the Internet of Things: A Feasibility Study. BlockSys, 2018.
[6]
M.J. Kannwischer, A. Genet, D. Butin, J. Kramer, and J. Buchmann, Differential power analysis of XMSS and SPHINCS. COSADE, 2018.

Cited By

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  • (2022)A decentralised data layer for collaborative End-to-End service assurance2022 25th Conference on Innovation in Clouds, Internet and Networks (ICIN)10.1109/ICIN53892.2022.9758094(81-85)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2022
  • (2021)Secure Path: Block-Chaining IoT Information for Continuous Authentication in Smart SpacesIoT10.3390/iot20200172:2(326-340)Online publication date: 18-May-2021
  • (2021)Blockchain Technology Based on Algorand Applied to Low-Power and Low-Cost IoT Devices2021 6th International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies (SpliTech)10.23919/SpliTech52315.2021.9566464(01-06)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2021
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Dominik Strzalka

Sensor systems and Internet of Things (IoT) environments raise a new major challenge to security. Some of these issues can be solved with blockchain protocols, for example, distributed ledger technologies (DLTs); however, it is still not clear whether blockchain protocols can be implemented efficiently on resource-constrained IoT devices. The paper shows an example of a secure IoT device with IOTA functionalities: an IOTA light node based on STM32, with all communication functions, cryptographic functions, and IOTA operations. ARM Cortex-M controllers allow up to 22 times faster performance. The examined solution uses a new approach based on trits = -1, 0, 1 and trytes. The proposed light node is done with the STM32 boards Nucleo-F746ZG and Nucleo-F429ZI, both equipped with an Ethernet module. The presented solution's security aspects are given in section 2.2. A noted limitation of this solution: each transaction must contain a computed proof-of-work (PoW) nonce; however, this cannot be done quickly enough, so there is a need to find other possibilities.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
BlockSys '19: Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Blockchain-enabled Networked Sensor
November 2019
35 pages
ISBN:9781450370127
DOI:10.1145/3362744
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 10 November 2019

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Author Tags

  1. Distributed Ledger Technology
  2. IOTA
  3. Internet of Things
  4. Networked Systems
  5. STM32
  6. Security

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Cited By

View all
  • (2022)A decentralised data layer for collaborative End-to-End service assurance2022 25th Conference on Innovation in Clouds, Internet and Networks (ICIN)10.1109/ICIN53892.2022.9758094(81-85)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2022
  • (2021)Secure Path: Block-Chaining IoT Information for Continuous Authentication in Smart SpacesIoT10.3390/iot20200172:2(326-340)Online publication date: 18-May-2021
  • (2021)Blockchain Technology Based on Algorand Applied to Low-Power and Low-Cost IoT Devices2021 6th International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies (SpliTech)10.23919/SpliTech52315.2021.9566464(01-06)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2021
  • (2021)Secure Asset Tracking in Manufacturing through Employing IOTA Distributed Ledger Technology2021 IEEE/ACM 21st International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing (CCGrid)10.1109/CCGrid51090.2021.00091(754-761)Online publication date: May-2021
  • (2021)HistoTrust: Ethereum-Based Attestation of a Data History Built with OP-TEE and TPMFoundations and Practice of Security10.1007/978-3-031-08147-7_9(130-145)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2021
  • (2021)IOTA-Based Mobile Application for Environmental Sensor Data VisualizationComplex, Intelligent and Software Intensive Systems10.1007/978-3-030-79725-6_28(288-296)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2021

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