Quantum-safe blockchain-assisted data encryption protocol for internet of things networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly growing, providing convenience in daily life. However, ensuring the security of IoT systems is crucial, especially as they generate vast amounts of data, often containing personal and private information. To address these issues, we propose a quantum-safe blockchain attested encryption scheme that uses lattice-based encryption with blockchain technology. This consensus process removes reliance on third-party central service providers and uses consensus nodes as proxy service nodes to encrypt data and aggregate translated ciphertext. This approach mitigates the limitations of using a decentralized network for secure storage and dissemination of private encrypted data. Moreover, the security analysis demonstrates security against attacks from polynomial-time adversaries and probabilistic polynomial-time adversaries. Additionally, the performance evaluation shows that the proposed scheme outperforms existing ones in terms of computational and communication costs. The encryption and decryption costs are minimized to \(T_{*1} + (T_{*2} + T_{*3} + T_{+1}) \approx 3.096\) $T_{\ast 1}^{}+(T_{\ast 2}^{}+T_{\ast 3}^{}+T_{+1})\approx 3.096$ , and \(T_{*6} \approx 0.010\) $T_{\ast 6}^{}\approx 0.010$ , respectively, demonstrating its efficiency. A comparison of properties and features with other protocols highlights the proposed scheme’s advantages, such as quantum resistance, multi-authority support, and collision resistance. This combination establishes the proposed scheme as a robust solution. The proposed protocol employs lattice-based encryption and blockchain consensus algorithms to facilitate IoT data exchange, making it highly efficient and secure for the transfer of information in IoT systems.