Challenges in Blockchain as a Solution for IoT Ecosystem Threats and Access Control: A Survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews security challenges, threats, and blockchain-based solutions in IoT ecosystems, highlighting integration issues, attacks, and future research directions to enhance IoT security.

Contribution

It consolidates threats, access control issues, and remedies in IoT and blockchain integration, including real-life attack examples and research gaps.

Findings

Identified key security threats in IoT systems.

Analyzed attacks on public blockchain protocols.

Outlined future research directions for IoT security.

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is increasingly influencing and transforming various aspects of our daily lives. Contrary to popular belief, it raises security and privacy issues as it is used to collect data from consumers or automated systems. Numerous articles are published that discuss issues like centralised control systems and potential alternatives like integration with blockchain. Although a few recent surveys focused on the challenges and solutions facing the IoT ecosystem, most of them did not concentrate on the threats, difficulties, or blockchain-based solutions. Additionally, none of them focused on blockchain and IoT integration challenges and attacks. In the context of the IoT ecosystem, overall security measures are very important to understand the overall challenges. This article summarises difficulties that have been outlined in numerous recent articles and articulates various attacks and security challenges in a variety of approaches, including blockchain-based solutions and so on. More clearly, this contribution consolidates threats, access control issues, and remedies in brief. In addition, this research has listed some attacks on public blockchain protocols with some real-life examples that can guide researchers in taking preventive measures for IoT use cases. Finally, a future research direction concludes the research gaps by analysing contemporary research contributions.