Smart Contract Assisted Public Key Infrastructure for Internet of Things

IoT devices use PKI to authenticate themselves in the network to manage the authenticity of network, data confidentially and data integrity. This paper proposes an approach to implement the smart contract-based Public Key Infrastructure (SC-PKI) for the Internet of Things. In the proposed approach, Smart contracts are used for public key life cycle management starting from the generation of the public key, distributing public key to the revocation of the public key in the form of X.509 certificate. SC-PKI does not have any third-party centralized certification authorities (CAs) to issue, validate, and revoke the certificates. All these activities are executed by the smart contract on a dedicated blockchain network. The proposed approach enhances the network’s security, avoids single-point failure, and increases the certificate verification performance.