Leveraging Cryptographic Primitives of Blockchain for Trust in Smart Systems

Calculating and maintaining trust using Hyperledger Fabric in smart systems plays a vital role in mitigating various trust-related attacks. Current smart systems encounter several challenges, including dependence on centralized trust authorities, which are prone to attacks and present single points of failure, as well as the need to maintain user privacy while establishing trust. Ensuring data integrity and authenticity is equally crucial. In these systems, nodes assess the trustworthiness of other nodes based on their experiences and recommendations. However, trust calculations can be vulnerable to integrity attacks from malicious nodes, such as bad-mouthing and ballot stuffing. To address these threats, trust can be calculated and securely stored on the blockchain. We selected Hyperledger Fabric as the blockchain framework and conducted a prototype implementation of trust calculation on a reduced scale involving 10 nodes. Hyperledger Fabric, being a private, permissioned blockchain, is suitable for decentralized trust calculations and storage in smart devices. We simulated a healthcare scenario within an HLF network, demonstrating secure trust calculation among IoT devices. The results indicate that leveraging the cryptographic properties of blockchain significantly enhances the overall security and trustworthiness of smart systems.