The Internet of Things look out on growing security and privacy defies, principally in light of the up growth of quantum threats. To handle these defies, we suggest a unified security framework that merges post-quantum blockchain technologies and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to attain secure authentication, decentralized identity management, and advanced data protection. The provided system based on a power-weighted consensus mechanism, compressed and overlapping recursive ZKPs, and transaction batching to decrease on-chain load. The outcomes display that the suggested system outperforms conventional systems and state-of-the-art solutions, with response time reduced to 92 ms, transaction throughput increased to 735 tx/s, energy consumption reduced to 0.37 J/op, and authentication accuracy increased to 97.6%, achieving a privacy score of 0.91.These outcomes emphasize that the offered framework not only attains superior performance but as well supplies strong resistance to quantum attacks and high privacy warranties, making it a promising solution for securing future IoT environments.
The expansion of the Metaverse presents security risks that conventional perimeter-based protections are unable to mitigate. This research introduces and experimentally substantiates a Zero-Trust Architecture (ZTA) that incorporates a federated ResNet-50 model for anomaly detection, a decentralized identification system based on Hyperledger Fabric using zk-SNARKs, and CRYSTALS-Kyber for quantum-resistant key exchange. The architecture attains a 42.7% decrease in False Acceptance Rate (5.2% compared to a 9.1% baseline, p < 0.01), 99.1% resilience to Sybil attacks, and partial compliance with GDPR using cryptographic erasure proofs. Quantum security is based on the Module-LWE issue, requiring 2187 operations, which surpasses NIST Level 3 standards, and incurs a latency overhead of 1.2 times and an energy consumption increase of 28.9% compared to AES-256. AI inference needs 3.1 times more GPU resources. Four innovative contributions are introduced: Integrated ZTA empirical validation, FAR reduction benchmark, zk-SNARKs for GDPR compliance, and human-centric validation indicating that usability predicts adoption (β = 0.47, p < 0.001). The architecture offers a scalable, experimentally substantiated basis for protecting decentralized virtual environments.
Gabriel Silva Atencio· Computing&AI Connect· 0 citations
We present a lightweight blockchain-based authentication framework for secure communication in Internet of Things (IoT) networks. The framework integrates a permissioned blockchain with ECC-256 (secp256r1, 128-bit security, NIST SP 800-57) to provide mutual authentication, data integrity, and non-repudiation for resource-constrained IoT devices. A novel Proof-of-Authentication (PoA) consensus mechanism eliminates energy-intensive mining. Formal verification via complete BAN logic derivations and AVISPA (OFMC and CL-AtSe, Dolev-Yao model) confirms resistance to replay, man-in-the-middle, Sybil, impersonation, compromised-gateway, and blockchain-manipulation attacks. Prototype results over 100 repeated trials (95% CI) on Raspberry Pi and ESP32 achieve 221.1±4.8 ms authentication latency and 30.1±0.9 mJ energy—42.6% and 37.8% lower than comparable schemes. Sub-linear latency scaling is demonstrated for networks up to 1000 devices.
Ashraf A. Abu-Ein, Obaida M. Al-hazaimeh· WSEAS Transactions on Inform...· 0 citations
This research introduces a novel Unified Quantum-Resilient Blockchain-Zero Knowledge Proofs Privacy Authentication Framework (QBC-ZKPAF) aimed at enhancing security in IoT environments. The system combines post-quantum cryptography, blockchain technology, and Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) to provide secure communication, access management, and privacy-preserving authentication. It uses a Deep Q-Network Multi-Factor safe Key (DQN-MFSK) for dynamic key selection, a hybrid Reinforcement-Lattice Blockchain Key Generation for quantum-resilient key creation, and Zero-Knowledge Proofs for privacy-preserving signatures to ensure a safe Internet of Things environment. Data privacy, secrecy, auditability, traceability, and resistance to changing threats, such as quantum attacks, are all guaranteed by this architecture. Transparency and thorough post-event audit trails are supported by the blockchain ledger's immutability, which records all access attempts, data exchanges, and device interactions in an unchangeable way. Through a tracing key kept on the audit server within the Zero Trust Architecture, the architecture allows accurate source tracing in the event of suspicious activity or breaches. QBC-ZKPAF provides strong security and privacy solutions for Internet of Things networks by adopting multi-factor authentication and decentralizing identity management. The framework's efficacy is confirmed by experimental results, which show 98% privacy preservation, 700 TPS throughput, 0.98 quantum resilience, and 96% access control effectiveness, making it ideal for contemporary blockchain and IoT applications.
Uzma Shereen, Lubna Nausheen· American Journal of AI Cyber...· 0 citations
This paper introduces Data Communities as a novel paradigm for privacy-preserving, blockchain-enabled cooperative digital infrastructures, formalized within the Cooperative Digital Infrastructure (CDI) framework and formalizes privacy guarantees through an adversarial model encompassing classical, quantum, insider, and governance-level threats.
Quantum computing poses a significant threat to classical asymmetric cryptography, which is essential for ensuring confidentiality, authentication, and key exchange in contemporary digital infrastructures. Although post-quantum cryptography (PQC) provides mechanisms that resist quantum attacks, its implementation in Internet of Things (IoT) systems is challenged by constrained resources, including limitations in computation, memory, energy, latency, and bandwidth, and the heterogeneity of devices. This paper offers a comprehensive narrative review of PQC approaches applicable to IoT, systematically organizing 30 peer-reviewed studies published between 2022 and 2026 across four layers: device, communication, distributed trust, and application. Additionally, the review examines two cross-cutting dimensions, privacy and side-channel resistance. The analysis indicates a significant prevalence of lattice-based schemes, hybrid strategies, and integrations with blockchain technology, zero-knowledge proofs, federated learning, homomorphic encryption, AI, and Zero Trust architectures. Notably, key gaps remain in side-channel evaluation, migration pathways, deployment costs, and real-world validation—issues that are particularly critical given the long lifecycles of IoT devices and the ongoing threat of “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks.
Rodrigo Jara Espinoza, Yohamin Nafit Pimentel Alarcon, Angelo Taco-Jimenez et al.· Interfases· 0 citations
With the growing Internet of Things (IoT), many applications like traffic management, smart cities,
environment monitoring, industrial automation and healthcare have been revolutionized. As the number of resourcelimited IoT devices grows and connects with each other, security issues have become more intricate and severe, such as
unauthorized access, data tampering, replay attacks, and the rise in threat from quantum computing to traditional
cryptographic methods. To solve those problems, this paper proposes Quantum Shield-IoT, which is a quantum-resilient
hybrid security framework that combines the Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocol of BB84 with ASCON
lightweight authenticated encryption, blockchain security, and cloud computing to ensure secure end-to-end data
transmission in IoT. The BB84 protocol works both to generate quantum secure cryptographic keys, and to identify
eavesdropping via Quantum Bit Error Rate (QBER) analysis. The generated keys are used by ASCON-128 to ensure
efficient data confidentiality, integrity and authentication with low computation load, which makes it suitable for resourceconstrained IoT devices. Encrypted data are securely stored in the cloud while the data integrity and traceability of the
SHA-256 hash values are ensured by being stored on the blockchain, making them irretrievable. Encrypted data are
stored securely in the cloud, while the data integrity and traceability of the hash value ensure irretrievable storage through
the blockchain. The proposed framework was implemented using IBM Quantum Qiskit, ASCON-128, blockchain
platforms and cloud storage. Experimental results show that quantum bit error rate (QBER) varies from 2.1% to 3.5%
for typical communication and 24.8% for eavesdropping attempts, proving reliable QKD. ASCON encryption range was
between 8.2 ms and 69.5 ms, and blockchain verification was less than 25 ms for 1,000 transactions with more than 99% of
the integrity accuracy. Moreover, the framework achieved an attack detection rate higher than 97.9% in several
cyberattacks and hence provided a scalable, light-weight and quantum resistant security solution for next generation IoT
ecosystems.
Yenubarla Winstone Smiles, Dr. S. Sevugarajan· International Journal of Inn...· 0 citations