Ilmu Komputer & AI editorial
Open AccessOA2025
Blockchain-Enhanced Attribute-Based Encryption Architecture With Feasibility Analysis
An end-to-end ABE-LSSS and blockchain key management design validated in NS3 for resource-constrained IoT networks
A. Ferrer-Rojas; B. T. Maharaj; M. C. Hlopheยท IEEE Accessยท 2025ยท DOI 10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3554643
The core problem
The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has created an urgent need for data security solutions that can operate within severe resource constraints. Traditional encryption methods such as RSA and AES struggle to balance security guarantees with performance overhead, leaving systems exposed to advanced cyber threats. Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising complement, offering decentralized, tamper-resistant data protection that enhances trust and transparency across distributed networks. In parallel, Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) schemes have been developed, often combining asymmetric and symmetric encryption to achieve both efficiency and fine-grained access control. Despite these advances, significant gaps remain in practical deployment: network architectures for ABE-based systems are underexplored, and feasibility simulations under realistic IoT conditions are limited. This study addresses those gaps by proposing an end-to-end security architecture that integrates ABE with Linear Secret Sharing Scheme (LSSS) access policies and blockchain-based distributed key management. The central research question is whether such an integrated design can remain light
Innovation
Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed architecture achieves consensus times as low as 0.25 seconds for key agreement and 0.7 seconds for message consensus, even in resource-constrained settings. For large networks, consensus times reached as low as 0.75 seconds, indicating that the system scales without prohibitive latency growth. The system also achieved an average throughput of 0.3 transactions per second in low-resource environments. These results are notable because they show that blockchain-based key management can operate within the tight latency and energy budgets typical of IoT devices. The key agreement time of 0.25 s suggests that session establishment is fast enough for many real-time IoT applications, while the 0.7 s message consensus time supports near-real-time data exchange. The large-network consensus time of 0.75 s further indicates that the architecture can handle broader deployments without a linear degradation in performance. The throughput of 0.3 TPS in low-resource environments reflects the trade-off between security and efficiency: while not high in absolute terms, it is sufficient for many IoT use cases where data rates are low and security is
The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has created an urgent need for data security solutions that can operate within severe resource constraints. Traditional encryption methods such as RSA and AES struggle to balance security guarantees with performance overhead, leaving systems exposed to advanced cyber threats. Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising complement, offering decentralized, tamper-resistant data protection that enhances trust and transparency across distributed networks. In parallel, Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) schemes have been developed, often combining asymmetric and symmetric encryption to achieve both efficiency and fine-grained access control. Despite these advances, significant gaps remain in practical deployment: network architectures for ABE-based systems are underexplored, and feasibility simulations under realistic IoT conditions are limited. This study addresses those gaps by proposing an end-to-end security architecture that integrates ABE with Linear Secret Sharing Scheme (LSSS) access policies and blockchain-based distributed key management. The central research question is whether such an integrated design can remain lightweight and scalable enough for constrained environments while preserving strong security properties. The authors evaluate feasibility using Network Simulator 3 (NS3) within a simulated IoT network, focusing on consensus latency and throughput as key performance indicators.
The proposed architecture combines three core components: (1) an ABE scheme with LSSS access policies to enforce fine-grained, attribute-based access control over encrypted data; (2) a blockchain layer that provides distributed, tamper-resistant key management; and (3) an NS3-based simulation environment that models an IoT network with resource-constrained devices. The ABE-LSSS construction allows data owners to define access policies as monotone span programs, where a secret is shared among attributes according to a matrix of size . For a row associated with attribute , the share is computed as:
Why it matters
The feasibility analysis shows that combining ABE with LSSS access policies and blockchain-based key management can deliver strong security without sacrificing performance in IoT contexts. The consensus times of 0.25 s (key agreement) and 0.7 s (message consensus) are competitive with, or better than, many existing blockchain-based IoT security proposals. The large-network consensus time of 0.75 s suggests that the architecture avoids the exponential latency growth that often plagues distributed consensus in resource-constrained settings. The average throughput of 0.3 TPS in low-resource environments is a limitation, but it is acceptable for applications such as smart metering, environmental monitoring, and industrial telemetry, where data volumes are modest and security requirements are high. The use of LSSS access policies provides flexibility: data owners can define complex access structures without relying on a central authority, and the blockchain layer ensures that key management is transparent and tamper-resistant. The NS3-based evaluation adds credibility because it models realistic network conditions, including device heterogeneity and link variability. However, the study also reveals open challenges: throughput could become a bottleneck in high-density deployments, and the energy cost of consensus on battery-powered devices requires further investigation. Future work could explore lightweight consensus algorithms, hardware acceleration for ABE operations, and hybrid on-chain/off-chain key management to improve scalability. The architecture's modularity means that these improvements can be integrated without redesigning the core security model. Overall, the study provides a practical blueprint for secure, efficient data transmission in IoT and other distributed systems, and it lays the groundwork for further feasibility studies in real-world testbeds.
Who should read this
CS practitioners and researchers
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