Security in Edge Blockchains: Attacks and Countermeasures

Abstract: Edge blockchains, the blockchains running on edge computing infrastructures, have attracted a lot of attention in recent years. Thanks to data privacy, scalable computing resources, and distributed topology nature of edge computing, edge blockchains are considered promising solutions to facilitating future blockchain applications. However, edge blockchains face unique security issues caused by the deployment of vulnerable edge devices and networks, including supply chain attacks and insecure consensus offloading, which are mostly not well studied in previous literature. This paper is the first survey that discusses the attacks and countermeasures of edge blockchains. We first summarize the three-layer architecture of edge blockchains: blockchain management, blockchain consensus, and blockchain lightweight client. We then describe seven specific attacks on edge blockchain components and discuss the countermeasures. At last, we provide future research directions on securing edge blockchains. This survey will act as a guideline for researchers and developers to design and implement secure edge blockchains.

Keywords: blockchain; edge computing; security; survey