MalCon: A blockchain-based malware containment framework for Internet of Things

IoT devices have become a primary medium for malware (e.g., botnets) to launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Such malware exploit low-security measures in IoT devices to spread in networks and recruit new victims. Thus, there is a need for malware countermeasures that consider both the security and operability of the network. Indeed, some IoT devices might run critical processes that do not tolerate interruptions. This paper proposes MALCON, a blockchain-based malware containment framework for IoT. It aims to stop malware from spreading in a network by a set of containment strategies encoded into smart contracts to be executed by the infected devices. Moreover, MALCON provides a monitoring service that ensures trustworthy behavior in the network and reports to the system administrator any fraudulent activity of the monitored devices. MALCON was tested extensively with real-life malware and use cases. It quickly and drastically reduces the number of infected devices in a network, even in an extreme case of a fully connected network.