Blockchain meets Internet of Things (IoT) forensics: A unified framework for IoT ecosystems

With the continuously increasing number of security incidents targeting sensors, embedded devices, and other electronics appliances and systems that comprise the so-called Internet of things (IoT), the field of IoT forensics emerged as a branch of digital forensics focusing on the investigation of attacks in the IoT ecosystem. Digital evidence authenticity, integrity, confidentiality, and privacy are among the factors affecting the investigation process in IoT forensics, which can be addressed by employing the blockchain as the means not only for the preservation of digital evidence, but also for other steps of a digital forensics investigation process. The high-level goal of the paper is three-fold: to establish a holistic IoT forensics process as a reference point against which blockchain integration patterns and best practices will be identified in order to yield a robust, widely accepted and scalable architecture of the blockchain-enabled solution; to integrate the blockchain with the proposed IoT forensics process for addressing the above challenges; and to evaluate the overall solution highlighting improvements and potential performance bottlenecks. The proposed blockchain-enabled platform leverages multi-access edge computing and has been implemented with Hyperledger Fabric on an extensive virtualized testbed providing a realistic smart home environment. A thorough evaluation was conducted with real cyber-attacks generating digital evidence at high rates for testing the platform’s behavior at high load. The experimental results showed that the proposed platform achieved high throughput, excessively low latency, and zero error rate in the operation of the blockchain network.