Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

Ruledger: Ensuring Execution Integrity in Trigger-Action IoT Platforms

Jingwen Fan, Yi He, Bo Tang, Qi Li, Ravi Sandhu

TL;DR

Ruledger tackles the insecure execution of trigger-action rules in smart homes by introducing a ledger-based IoT platform that uses wallet agents and smart contracts to verify the authenticity and state of rule configurations, triggering events, and actions. It comprises three main modules—rule commits, triggering event verification, and verifiable action execution—that collectively record stateful transactions and enforce integrity even under partial platform or device compromise. The authors implement a real prototype with IFTTT and SmartThings, showing that end-to-end latency increases modestly (about 12.5%) and throughput remains practical for typical smart-home workloads. The work demonstrates that ledger-based verification can substantially strengthen rule-execution integrity against event spoofing, token leakage, and malicious transactions, enabling safer cross-vendor automation. Overall, Ruledger provides a scalable, auditable foundation for trustworthy trigger-action ecosystems with tangible performance trade-offs.

Abstract

Smart home IoT systems utilize trigger-action platforms, e.g., IFTTT, to manage devices from various vendors. However, they may be abused by triggering malicious rule execution with forged IoT devices or events violating the execution integrity and the intentions of the users. To address this issue, we propose a ledger based IoT platform called Ruledger, which ensures the correct execution of rules by verifying the authenticity of the corresponding information. Ruledger utilizes smart contracts to enforce verifying the information associated with rule executions, e.g., the user and configuration information from users, device events, and triggers in the trigger-action platforms. In particular, we develop three algorithms to enable ledger-wallet based applications for Ruledger and guarantee that the records used for verification are stateful and correct. Thus, the execution integrity of rules is ensured even if devices and platforms in the smart home systems are compromised. We prototype Ruledger in a real IoT platform, i.e., IFTTT, and evaluate the performance with various settings. The experimental results demonstrate Ruledger incurs an average of 12.53% delay, which is acceptable for smart home systems.

Ruledger: Ensuring Execution Integrity in Trigger-Action IoT Platforms

TL;DR

Ruledger tackles the insecure execution of trigger-action rules in smart homes by introducing a ledger-based IoT platform that uses wallet agents and smart contracts to verify the authenticity and state of rule configurations, triggering events, and actions. It comprises three main modules—rule commits, triggering event verification, and verifiable action execution—that collectively record stateful transactions and enforce integrity even under partial platform or device compromise. The authors implement a real prototype with IFTTT and SmartThings, showing that end-to-end latency increases modestly (about 12.5%) and throughput remains practical for typical smart-home workloads. The work demonstrates that ledger-based verification can substantially strengthen rule-execution integrity against event spoofing, token leakage, and malicious transactions, enabling safer cross-vendor automation. Overall, Ruledger provides a scalable, auditable foundation for trustworthy trigger-action ecosystems with tangible performance trade-offs.

Abstract

Smart home IoT systems utilize trigger-action platforms, e.g., IFTTT, to manage devices from various vendors. However, they may be abused by triggering malicious rule execution with forged IoT devices or events violating the execution integrity and the intentions of the users. To address this issue, we propose a ledger based IoT platform called Ruledger, which ensures the correct execution of rules by verifying the authenticity of the corresponding information. Ruledger utilizes smart contracts to enforce verifying the information associated with rule executions, e.g., the user and configuration information from users, device events, and triggers in the trigger-action platforms. In particular, we develop three algorithms to enable ledger-wallet based applications for Ruledger and guarantee that the records used for verification are stateful and correct. Thus, the execution integrity of rules is ensured even if devices and platforms in the smart home systems are compromised. We prototype Ruledger in a real IoT platform, i.e., IFTTT, and evaluate the performance with various settings. The experimental results demonstrate Ruledger incurs an average of 12.53% delay, which is acceptable for smart home systems.
Paper Structure (25 sections, 5 figures, 3 tables, 3 algorithms)

This paper contains 25 sections, 5 figures, 3 tables, 3 algorithms.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Smart Home Systems
  4. Distributed Ledgers
  5. Uncovering Vulnerabilities in Rule Execution
  6. Threat Model
  7. Violating Integrity of Rule Execution
  8. Overview of Ruledger
  9. Overview
  10. Challenges
  11. Design Details
  12. Rule Commits
  13. Triggering Event verification
  14. Verifiable Action Execution in Ruledger
  15. Discussion
  16. ...and 10 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: The main components of smart home systems. The IoT gateways from device vendors serve as device brokers for IoT platforms. The trigger-action platforms may be third-party.
  • Figure 2: Typical attacks against the smart home systems.
  • Figure 3: The architecture of Ruledger
  • Figure 4: The procedure of triggering event log verification
  • Figure 5: The throughput of Ruledger verification modules