Abstract
We present a low-overhead mechanism for self-sovereign identification and communication of IoT agents in constrained networks. Our main contribution is to enable native use of Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and DID-based secure communication on constrained networks, whereas previous works either did not consider the issue or relied on proxy-based architectures. We propose a new extension to DIDs along with a more concise serialization method for DID metadata. Moreover, in order to reduce the security overhead over transmitted messages, we adopted a binary message envelope. We implemented these proposals within the context of Swarm Computing, an approach for decentralized IoT. Results showed that our proposal reduces the size of identity metadata in almost four times and security overhead up to five times. We observed that both techniques are required to enable operation on constrained networks.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
A “DID method” is an extension of the DID specification;
- 2.
Note that the DDo can be cached after the first use.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
Some DID methods do not use endpoints.
- 7.
The size of DIDComm with CBOR is larger than DIDComm with JSON due to overhead of Base64 encoding.
References
Ockam DID Method Specification, November 2018. https://github.com/ockam-network/did-method-spec/blob/master/README.md
Tangleid DID Method Specification, June 2019. https://github.com/TangleID/TangleID/blob/develop/did-method-spec.md
Iotex DID Method Specification, August 2020. https://github.com/iotexproject/iotex-did/blob/master/README.md
Costa, L.C.P., Rabaey, J., Wolisz, A., Rosan, M., Zuffo, M.K.: Swarm OS control plane: an architecture proposal for heterogeneous and organic networks. IEEE Trans. Consum. Electron. 61(4), 454–462 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1109/TCE.2015.7389799
Fedrecheski, G., Rabaey, J.M., Costa, L.C., Ccori, P.C.C., Pereira, W.T., Zuffo, M.K.: Self-sovereign identity for IoT environments: a perspective. In: Proceedings of the Global IoT Summit 2020, pp. 1–6(2020)
Ferdous, M.S., Chowdhury, F., Alassafi, M.O.: In search of self-sovereign identity leveraging blockchain technology. IEEE Access 7, 103059–103079 (2019)
Fotiou, N., Pittaras, I., Siris, V.A., Polyzos, G.C.: Enabling opportunistic users in multi-tenant IoT systems using decentralized identifiers and permissioned blockchains. In: Proceedings of the 2nd International ACM Workshop on Security and Privacy for the Internet-of-Things, pp. 22–23 (2019)
Foundation, O.C.: OCF (2020). https://openconnectivity.org/developer/
Hardman, D.: DIDcomm messaging. DIF draft, DIF, December 2020. https://identity.foundation/didcomm-messaging/spec/
Hardman, D., Lodder, M.: Sovrin DID Method Specification, December 2020. https://sovrin-foundation.github.io/sovrin/spec/did-method-spec-template.html
Jones, M.B.: JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE). RFC 7518 May 2015. https://doi.org/10.17487/RFC7518. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7518
Lagutin, D., Kortesniemi, Y., Fotiou, N., Siris, V.A.: Enabling decentralised identifiers and verifiable credentials for constrained Internet-of-Things devices using oauth-based delegation. In: Workshop on Decentralized IoT Systems and Security (DISS) (2019)
Reshetova, E., McCool, M.: Web of Things (WoT) Security and Privacy Guidelines, April 2021. https://rawgit.com/w3c/wot-security/master/index.html
Schaad, J.: CBOR Object Signing and Encryption (COSE). RFC 8152, July 2017. https://doi.org/10.17487/RFC8152. https://rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8152.txt
Sporny, M., Longley, D., Allen, C., Sabadello, M., Reed, D.: Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) v1.0. W3C working draft, W3C, December 2013. https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core//
Sporny, M., Longley, D., Webber, C.: Veres One DID Method Specification, November 2019.https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-method-v1/
Steele, O., Sporny, M.: Did specification registries. W3C wg note, W3C, November 2020.https://w3c-ccg.github.io/did-method-v1/
Su, Y., Wu, J., Long, C., Wei, L.: Secure decentralized machine identifiers for Internet of Things. In: Proceedings of the 2020 the 2nd International Conference on Blockchain Technology, pp. 57–62 (2020)
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank researchers at the Laboratory for Integrated Systems at POLI USP, the Interdisciplinary Center of Interactive Technologies at USP, and the Berkeley Wireless Research Center. Authors would also like to thank for the funding provided by LSITEC.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Fedrecheski, G., Costa, L.C.P., Afzal, S., Rabaey, J.M., Lopes, R.D., Zuffo, M.K. (2022). A Low-Overhead Approach for Self-sovereign Identity in IoT. In: González-Vidal, A., Mohamed Abdelgawad, A., Sabir, E., Ziegler, S., Ladid, L. (eds) Internet of Things. GIoTS 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13533. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20936-9_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20936-9_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-20935-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-20936-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)