Secure and Fine-Grained Data Sharing in Internet of Things: Integration of Interplanetary File System and Cross-Blockchain for Access Control

With the proliferation of data sharing in the Internet of Things (IoT), protecting privacy-sensitive information and preventing unauthorized access have become paramount concerns. Existing centralized access control methods faces single-point-of-failure risks and lacks scalability for dynamic IoT systems. This article proposes a fine-grained access control framework based on cross-blockchain technology for transparent and flexible IoT data sharing. In our framework, the cross-blockchain module is facilitated to eliminate data isolation across domains, the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is used to mitigate centralized storage risks and reduce blockchain storage overhead, Ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption and symmetric encryption are integrated to enforce attribute-based, fine-grained access control with strong security guarantees. Meanwhile, the blockchain records data and key references to enforce secure access to shared data content. We further conduct security analysis and experimental evaluations, demonstrating the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed scheme.