Collaborative Intrusion Detection System (CIDS) protect large networks against distributed attacks. However, a CIDS is vulnerable to insider attacks that decrease the mutual trust among the CIDS nodes. Most existing trust management approaches rely on a central authority, trusted third parties or network peers for managing trust. The current techniques are prone to high false positives and vulnerable to various reputation attacks. For instance, device attestation manages trust among CIDS nodes by verifying the integrity of a node’s hardware and software configuration. However, it lacks real-time monitoring of the dynamic state, limiting its effectiveness against ongoing attacks and malware. Therefore, incorporating the system’s dynamic state in the trust framework is crucial, but it causes false positives requiring corrective mechanisms. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a blockchain-based integrated trust management framework for CIDS, incorporating the device’s genome attestation, the system’s dynamic parameters, and a false positive resilient reputation mechanism. By storing the reputation scores on the blockchain, the framework alleviates the need for a third party for trust management and thus mitigates attacks applicable to reputation-based systems. The paper performs a comprehensive security and performance analysis of the proposed framework to gauge its efficiency and study the effects of a penalty on a node’s reputation during the recovery and rally phases. We also study the impact of false positives on the reputation of a node. The results show that Hyperledger Fabric offers lower transaction latency and low CPU utilization compared to Ethereum Blockchain.

The contemporary era experiences an unprecedented dependence on data generated by individuals via an array of interconnected devices constituting the Internet of Things (IoT). The information amassed through IoT devices serves many objectives, including prescriptive analytics and predictive maintenance, preemptive healthcare measures, disaster mitigation, operational efficiency, and increased yield. In contrast, most applications or systems that rely on user-generated data to fulfill their business objectives face challenges in adhering to privacy protocols. Consequently, users are exposed to many privacy risks. Such infringements upon privacy provisions give rise to apprehensions regarding the authenticity of the processed data. Hence, this paper presents weaknesses and challenges in current practices and proposes “PrivySeC,” a distributed ledger technology (DLT) based framework for privacy-preserving and secure sharing of personally and non-personally identifiable information. The security analysis indicates that the proposed solution ensures data privacy by design and complies with most of the requirements mandated by various privacy regulations. Similarly, PrivySeC promises low transaction latency and provides high throughput. Although we have created a privacy-preserving solution for sharing smart farm data, it can be customized to meet the specific privacy requirements of individual applications.

The reliability of any IoT system's operation depends upon the accuracy of sensor data. Numerous sensing devices are also embedded in autonomous systems. The adversary can manipulate the output of an IoT device, such as a speed sensor or a temperature sensor, by altering its hardware, software modules, network parameters, or device configuration. These unauthorized changes may affect the legitimate operation of the autonomous system and cause a malfunction or a safety hazard. In addition, the corrupt sensor data may also affect the machine learning models by introducing false training data or biasing the model towards certain decisions to cause the autonomous system to make incorrect decisions. The existing techniques mostly perform memory attestation or ensure the secure execution of an application. In addition, current approaches have unrealistic assumptions about adversaries’ capabilities and rely on trusted parties to initiate and run the attestation protocol. No existing technique provides all the required security features, including protection against return-oriented programming and network attacks, including interference, rainbow, and physical compromise. Hence, this research presents a secure and efficient version of a unique hybrid attestation scheme "I2Map" that detects a malicious or malfunctioning IoT device based on an integrity map. The performance analysis infers that I2Map performs better in transaction commit time and transaction costs with more device parameters than its predecessor.

Phishing attacks are among the most prevalent attack mechanisms employed by attackers. The consequences of successful phishing include (and are not limited to) financial losses, impact on reputation, and identity theft. The paper presents a systematic literature review featuring 248 articles (from the beginning of 2018 until March 2023) across the main digital libraries to identify, (1) the existing mitigation strategies against phishing attacks, and the underlying technologies considered in the development of these strategies; (2) the most considered phishing vectors in the development of the mitigation strategies; (3) anti-phishing guidelines and recommendations for organizations and end-users respectively; and (4) gaps and open issues that exist in the state of the art. The paper advocates for the need to consider the abilities of human users during the design and development of the mitigation strategies as only technology-centric solutions will not suffice to cater to the challenges posed by phishing attacks.

The existing lottery-based consensus algorithms, such as Proof-of-Work, and Proof-of-Stake, are mostly used for blockchain-based financial technology applications. Similarly, the Byzantine Fault Tolerance algorithms do provide consensus finality, yet they are either communications intensive, vulnerable to Denial-of-Service attacks, poorly scalable, or have a low faulty node tolerance level. Moreover, these algorithms are not designed for the Internet of Things systems that require near-real-time transaction confirmation, maximum fault tolerance, and appropriate transaction validation rules. Hence, we propose "Pledge," a unique Proof-of-Honesty based consensus protocol to reduce the possibility of malicious behavior during blockchain consensus. Pledge also introduces the Internet of Things centric transaction validation rules. Initial experimentation shows that Pledge is economical and secure with low communications complexity and low latency in transaction confirmation.