Secure Access To Smart Cafeteria Devices Using Blockchain

Blockchain, the technology behind the Bitcoin, has emerged as a very important subject in the technology, industry, and beyond. A blockchain is made up of a series of blocks where each block contains data and a cryptographic representation of the previous block, which means that it becomes very hard to change the contents of any block without then needing to change every subsequent one. Blockchain provides a secure, transparent, and highly resistant way to record transactions or any digital interaction efficiently. Internet of Things (IoT), a system in which the connected smart devices exchange services and information with other connected devices, shows the future of communication and computing which evolved based on technical innovations in different fields such as increasing the data storage, and wireless connectivity.The current IoT systems rely on powerful centralized and intermediate communication paradigm known as the server-client model where all devices are identified and authenticated. In such model, the communication between devices is done through the server. Not just rely on handling the communication, but also it handles the authenticated and authorized access of services provided by these physical devices. Communication between the devices will need to be transmitted over the Internet exclusively, even if it occurs a few feet apart or the communication is in private network like a university, to ensure authentication and authorized access offered by physical devices. Where such a problem can be handled through peer-to-peer communication where the physical devices can communicate and interact directly with each other. Blockchain Technology as a decentralized approach with peer-to-peer IoT networking would solve many of the IoT security problems. Adopting a standardized peer-to-peer communication model to process the distributed hundreds of billions of transactions between IoT devices will significantly reduce the costs associated with installing and maintaining large single centralized data centers and will distribute computation and storage needs across the billions of devices that form IoT networks. This solution will maintain privacy and security in large-scale IoT networks and provide a form of authentication and consensus for transactions to prevent plagiarism and theft. In this presentation, I will utilize the Blockchain technology to enable the secure and authorized interactions between devices in the context of IoT. In a smart space (e.g., smart cafeteria) a user with a smartphone may initiate a secure transaction with the desired machine (e.g., coffee maker) where the transaction’s information will be encrypted then packed into a valid block. Such block is then sent to all the devices through the network to attach it to their chains. So, in this case the transactions will be totally secure and far away from violation and theft