A blockchain-empowered framework for decentralized trust management in Internet of Battlefield Things

The security of the Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) is greatly challenged by malicious intrusions from external environments. To protect IoBT from such intrusions, it is crucial to implement trust management (TM) at the node level. However, the decentralized and dynamic nature of IoBT means that participating nodes have no predetermined trust relationships. To address this issue, we propose a blockchain-empowered framework to achieve decentralized TM in IoBT. We begin by introducing a network model that integrates the space and ground segments with portable ping-pong stations. In the absence of fixed infrastructure, these stations enable rapid networking among combat units in IoBT. We also leverage these stations to form a blockchain network that manages decentralized trusts among IoBT nodes. Our blockchain-empowered TM framework consists of three algorithmic components: (i) Local Trust Computation: each IoBT node uses a local trust computation algorithm to compute the local trusts of its neighboring nodes; (ii) Global Trust Aggregation: portable ping-pong stations use a global trust aggregation algorithm to aggregate the global trusts of IoBT nodes; (iii) Blockchain Consensus Process: the global trusts of IoBT nodes are updated to the blockchain. We have also developed a new consensus algorithm that incentivizes blockchain nodes to proactively maintain the real trusts of IoBT nodes. We conducted several simulations incorporating different attack models of malicious nodes and system setups to comprehensively evaluate the performance of our TM framework. The simulation results demonstrate that our blockchain-empowered decentralized TM effectively suppresses the probability of successful attacks and thus improves the security of IoBT. In summary, our proposed framework offers a promising solution for achieving decentralized TM in IoBT, and we believe that it has the potential to significantly enhance the security of this rapidly developing field.