Blockchain-Driven Trusted Data Sharing With Privacy Protection in IoT Sensor Network

The development of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has achieved remarkable results in recent years. A large number of sensors and machinery are connected, and combined with the Internet, to achieve intelligent management and operation. However, the traditional centralized IoT data management solution inevitably encounters challenges of data trust, security, sustainability, and user privacy is difficult to guarantee. This paper takes the intelligent transportation sensor network as an example and proposes a blockchain-based Internet of Vehicles (IoV) data secure sharing scheme (called IoVChain), which implements automatic registration, rapid authentication, and reliable sharing method of IoV data through smart contract. The smart contract performs homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proof processing on the sensitive part of the data, and this part exists in the form of ciphertext on the blockchain. We adopt PBFT consensus mechanism to ensure the consistency of the entire network ledger, and all the IoV data processing and usage procedure is stored in the Merkle-tree-based block, which cannot be tampered with. Compared with the centralized IoV data management solution, the IoVChain scheme avoids the risk of single point of failure, and keeps the IoV data credible, available, and tamper-resistant under the premise of privacy and security, so that the data can be traced when needed. We have implemented the IoVChain scheme based on the consortium blockchain for trusted and secure sharing of IoV data. Finally, analysis and evaluation show that the proposed IoVChain scheme is feasible, safe, and extensible for the secure sharing of IoV data.