Blockchain-PUF-Based Secure Authentication Protocol for Internet of Things

Devices constituting the Internet of Things (IoT) have become widely used, therein generating a large amount of sensitive data. The communication of these data across IoT devices and over the public Internet makes them susceptible to several cyber attacks. In this paper, we propose an efficient blockchain approach based on the secret computational model of a physically unclonable function (PUF). The proposed framework aims to guarantee authentication of the devices and the miner with a faster verification process compared to existing blockchain techniques. Furthermore, the combination of the blockchain and PUF allows us to propose an efficient framework that guarantees data provenance and data integrity in IoT networks. The proposed framework employs PUFs, which provide unique hardware fingerprints for establishing data provenance. Smart contracts based on the blockchain provide a decentralized digital ledger that is able to resist data tampering attacks.