Author: Denis Avetisyan
A novel framework utilizes Ethereum smart contracts to establish a decentralized and tamper-proof system for verifying the integrity of critical firmware in Cyber-Physical Systems.
This paper details a blockchain-based solution leveraging SHA-256 hashing and Ethereum smart contracts for decentralized firmware integrity verification in Cyber-Physical Systems.
Maintaining the integrity of firmware is paramount for the security of Cyber-Physical Systems, yet traditional verification methods are increasingly vulnerable to centralized failures and insider threats. This paper, ‘Decentralized Firmware Integrity Verification for Cyber-Physical Systems Using Ethereum Blockchain’, proposes a novel framework leveraging Ethereum smart contracts to establish a decentralized, tamper-proof system for verifying firmware authenticity. By storing SHA-256 hashes on the blockchain, our approach enables trustless validation and real-time integrity checks, demonstrably reducing gas costs and enhancing scalability with potential Layer-2 integrations. Could this blockchain-based model represent a significant step towards more resilient and secure critical infrastructure against evolving supply chain attacks?
The Inevitable Erosion of Firmware Trust
The escalating frequency of attacks targeting firmware represents a significant and growing threat to digital security. Unlike traditional software vulnerabilities addressed through patching, compromised firmware often persists undetected, establishing a deeply embedded foothold within a device. This is due to firmware’s foundational role – controlling hardware at its most basic level – and its relative inaccessibility for typical user intervention. Consequently, malicious actors are increasingly prioritizing firmware as a means to bypass conventional defenses, enabling persistent malware, data theft, and remote control of affected systems. The proliferation of connected devices, from industrial control systems to everyday consumer electronics, dramatically expands the attack surface and amplifies the potential impact of these firmware-level compromises, creating systemic risk across critical infrastructure and personal privacy.
While secure boot mechanisms are designed to establish trust at device startup by verifying firmware signatures, these protections are increasingly circumvented by attacks targeting the supply chain. Sophisticated malicious actors are no longer solely focused on exploiting devices post-deployment; instead, they infiltrate the manufacturing process or compromise software providers before devices even reach consumers. This allows attackers to inject malicious code directly into the firmware, creating backdoors or disabling security features, all while appearing legitimate during the secure boot process. Consequently, even devices passing all standard security checks can be fundamentally compromised, highlighting a critical vulnerability that necessitates a shift towards more robust and transparent integrity verification methods extending beyond the device itself and encompassing the entire software and hardware lifecycle.
The escalating prevalence of interconnected devices, from household appliances to critical infrastructure, is increasingly shadowed by a fundamental security challenge: a lack of verifiable firmware integrity. This opacity creates a significant vulnerability, as compromised firmware can grant malicious actors complete control over these devices, enabling data breaches, ransomware attacks, and even physical disruption. Unlike software updates which often include digital signatures and checksums for user verification, firmware updates frequently lack such transparency, leaving consumers and organizations unable to independently confirm their authenticity. This reliance on trust – often placed in manufacturers or update servers – establishes a single point of failure, and the inability to detect subtle modifications to the firmware opens the door to sophisticated, persistent threats that can bypass traditional security measures and compromise the very foundation of device operation.
Contemporary firmware security frequently depends on centralized authorities – manufacturers, operating system vendors, or dedicated hardware security providers – to vouch for the integrity of code executing on a device. This reliance introduces a critical vulnerability: a compromise of that single authority instantly jeopardizes the security of countless systems. If a trusted key is stolen, or a signing server is subverted, malicious firmware can be disseminated and installed undetected. This creates a substantial single point of failure, as the entire chain of trust collapses with the compromise of a central entity. Decentralized approaches, leveraging technologies like cryptographic proofs and distributed ledgers, are gaining traction as potential mitigations, aiming to distribute trust and eliminate the risks inherent in centralized models. The inherent fragility of centralized trust is increasingly recognized as a fundamental weakness in securing the rapidly expanding landscape of connected devices.
The Inevitable Shift to Distributed Trust
The Ethereum blockchain provides a mechanism for creating permanent, unalterable records of firmware hashes through cryptographic hashing and distributed ledger technology. Each firmware update’s hash – a unique fingerprint of the file – is recorded as a transaction on the blockchain. This process leverages the blockchain’s inherent immutability; once a transaction is confirmed and added to a block, it cannot be altered or removed. Consequently, any subsequent modification to the firmware would result in a different hash value, immediately revealing the tampering. The decentralized nature of the Ethereum network ensures that this record is replicated across numerous nodes, eliminating single points of failure and providing a highly resilient audit trail of firmware integrity.
Smart Contracts, self-executing agreements coded onto the blockchain, function as automated verification agents by enforcing pre-defined integrity rules for firmware updates. These contracts receive firmware hashes as input and compare them against expected, previously stored values. Upon successful validation – a match between the submitted hash and the stored reference – the contract confirms authenticity and can trigger subsequent actions, such as authorizing installation or logging the update. Conversely, a failed hash comparison indicates potential tampering or corruption, resulting in rejection of the update and triggering pre-defined error handling. The deterministic nature of smart contract execution ensures consistent and reliable verification, independent of external intervention.
On-chain verification establishes a permanent, publicly accessible record of all firmware updates on the blockchain. Each update’s hash, along with relevant metadata like timestamp and device identifier, is recorded as a transaction. This creates an immutable audit trail; any subsequent modification to the firmware results in a hash mismatch, immediately detectable through blockchain analysis. Because the blockchain is distributed and cryptographically secured, this verification process is resistant to tampering and provides a verifiable history of firmware integrity, accessible to any authorized participant. The transparency inherent in this system allows for independent audits and enhances accountability throughout the firmware lifecycle.
Traditional firmware verification relies on centralized authorities or trusted repositories, creating single points of failure susceptible to compromise or manipulation. Anchoring firmware integrity to a decentralized ledger, such as a blockchain, distributes trust across a network of nodes, eliminating this vulnerability. Any alteration to the firmware hash necessitates consensus across the network, making unauthorized changes exceptionally difficult. This distributed consensus mechanism ensures that the integrity record is tamper-proof and consistently verifiable by any participant, fostering increased trust in the authenticity and provenance of the firmware itself. The elimination of centralized control minimizes the risk associated with malicious actors or system failures impacting the verification process.
The Proof is in the Implementation
A proof-of-concept system was implemented utilizing the Web3.py library to establish communication with the Sepolia Testnet. This enabled the deployment of a smart contract specifically designed for firmware verification. Web3.py facilitated the creation and execution of transactions required to interact with the blockchain, including the storage of firmware hashes and the validation of firmware integrity through on-chain comparisons. The Sepolia Testnet served as the target blockchain environment for testing the functionality of the smart contract and the Web3.py integration, allowing for a cost-effective and isolated testing phase before potential deployment on a mainnet.
Firmware hashing utilizes the SHA-256 algorithm to create a deterministic, fixed-size representation – a unique fingerprint – of the Arduino firmware. SHA-256 operates by taking the firmware’s binary data as input and producing a 256-bit (32-byte) hash value. This process ensures that any modification, however small, to the firmware will result in a drastically different hash. The resulting hash serves as a cryptographic summary of the firmware’s contents, allowing for efficient and reliable integrity checks without needing to compare the entire firmware image. This technique is foundational to establishing trust and verifying the authenticity of deployed firmware.
Infura served as the primary interface for interacting with the Ethereum blockchain throughout the implementation and validation phases. This Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform eliminated the need for local node operation, providing a stable and scalable connection to the Sepolia testnet. Specifically, Infura handled all RPC requests related to smart contract deployment, firmware hash registration, and verification transactions. The utilization of Infura’s managed node infrastructure ensured consistent uptime and mitigated potential network instability, allowing for uninterrupted testing and data collection regarding transaction costs and confirmation times. This reliance on a third-party provider also simplified the development process by abstracting away the complexities of blockchain node maintenance and synchronization.
Merkle Proofs optimize firmware verification by enabling validation against a single root hash, rather than requiring individual comparisons to a list of registered hashes. This is achieved through a tree-like structure where each leaf node represents a firmware hash, and each internal node is a hash of its children. A Merkle Proof consists of the firmware hash, the relevant nodes along the path to the root, and the root hash itself. Verification involves recalculating the hashes up the path to confirm they match the provided root hash, thereby proving the firmware’s integrity without revealing the entire set of registered hashes and reducing the computational load and gas costs associated with on-chain verification.
Firmware hash registration on the Sepolia test network consumed 0.0044 ETH in gas. This cost encompasses the data storage and computational resources required to permanently record the firmware’s SHA-256 hash on the blockchain. The observed gas cost indicates the economic viability of utilizing blockchain technology for secure firmware identification and version control, establishing a baseline for on-chain storage of device metadata. This cost was measured during a proof-of-concept implementation utilizing Web3.py and Infura for blockchain interaction.
On the Sepolia testnet, individual hash verification transactions to confirm firmware integrity demonstrated a gas cost of 0.00014 ETH. This cost represents the computational expense required to execute the smart contract function that compares the submitted hash with the stored reference hash. The comparatively low gas cost associated with verification, relative to the initial firmware registration cost of 0.0044 ETH, indicates an efficient mechanism for repeated integrity checks without substantial economic overhead. This cost-effectiveness is critical for applications requiring frequent or continuous verification of device firmware.
Transaction confirmation time, measured across multiple interactions with the Sepolia testnet, averaged 14.6 seconds. This metric represents the time elapsed between transaction submission and inclusion in a mined block, and is a key indicator of system responsiveness. Measurements were taken during periods of moderate network congestion to provide a representative value. While confirmation times can fluctuate based on network conditions and gas prices, the observed 14.6 second average demonstrates the practical feasibility of utilizing the Sepolia testnet for real-time firmware integrity verification and establishes a baseline for performance expectations.
The Inevitable Expansion of Trust
The financial burden of on-chain verification, specifically the ‘gas’ costs associated with each transaction, presents a scalability challenge for widespread adoption of blockchain-secured IoT device firmware. However, employing Layer-2 solutions offers a practical mitigation strategy. These solutions operate ‘off-chain’, processing transactions outside of the main blockchain and periodically settling them on-chain in batches. This drastically reduces the number of individual transactions recorded directly on the blockchain, thereby lowering gas costs and increasing throughput. Such an approach allows for more frequent firmware updates and a larger number of connected devices without incurring prohibitive transaction fees, ultimately fostering a more economically viable and scalable secure IoT ecosystem.
Decentralized storage via the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) offers a robust alternative to traditional, centralized firmware repositories, significantly bolstering both security and availability. By distributing firmware binaries across a peer-to-peer network, the system mitigates single points of failure and reduces the risk of data tampering or censorship. Each firmware update is content-addressed, meaning it’s identified by its cryptographic hash, ensuring that any unauthorized modification is immediately detectable. This integration provides a tamper-proof record of firmware versions and enhances resilience against denial-of-service attacks, as the data remains accessible even if some nodes become unavailable. Ultimately, utilizing IPFS fosters a more trustworthy and reliable system for managing the software that powers interconnected devices.
Integrating Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) or Hardware Security Modules (HSM) represents a significant advancement in securing Internet of Things (IoT) devices. These specialized chips establish a robust hardware root of trust, meaning cryptographic keys are generated and stored within a tamper-resistant environment, shielded from software-based attacks. This protection is critical, as compromised keys can allow malicious actors to spoof devices, intercept data, or deploy malicious firmware updates. By anchoring security in dedicated hardware, TPM/HSM modules drastically reduce the attack surface and provide a higher level of assurance that the device’s identity and data remain confidential and integral, bolstering the entire system’s resilience against increasingly sophisticated threats and enabling more secure over-the-air updates.
The convergence of decentralized firmware verification, secure storage, and hardware-backed trust ultimately forges a more resilient Internet of Things landscape. By shifting from centralized models – historically vulnerable to single points of failure and malicious manipulation – this system proposes a distributed architecture where device integrity is collaboratively maintained. This isn’t merely about preventing compromised devices; it’s about establishing a verifiable lineage for every software update, ensuring authenticity and fostering user confidence. The resulting ecosystem empowers device owners with greater control over their connected devices, mitigates risks associated with supply chain attacks, and lays the groundwork for innovative applications demanding high levels of security, such as smart healthcare, autonomous vehicles, and critical infrastructure management. Consequently, this framework moves beyond reactive security measures towards a proactive, self-regulating IoT environment built on transparency and trust.
Firmware registration within the system incurred a gas cost of 78,200 units during testing on the Sepolia testnet, translating to a remarkably low expense of approximately $0.12 USD per device. This economic feasibility is a crucial factor for widespread adoption, particularly within the Internet of Things where deployments often involve a vast number of interconnected devices. The minimal transaction cost demonstrates the potential for scalable and affordable on-chain verification of firmware integrity, reducing barriers to entry for developers and fostering a more secure and trustworthy ecosystem for connected devices. Such low overhead suggests that even with extensive device networks, the economic burden of maintaining verifiable firmware remains manageable and sustainable.
Initial testing reveals the system’s capacity to process nine to ten firmware registration transactions each minute under typical network conditions. This throughput, achieved on the Sepolia testnet, indicates a promising level of scalability for managing a growing number of connected devices. While representing a baseline performance under light concurrency, this rate suggests the architecture can handle a considerable volume of firmware updates and verifications, potentially supporting hundreds of devices per hour. Further optimization and stress-testing are planned to determine the system’s limitations and refine its performance under heavier loads, ultimately paving the way for broader deployment within a large-scale IoT network.
The pursuit of immutable trust in these systems feels less like engineering and more like tending a garden. This paper’s exploration of decentralized firmware integrity, utilizing Ethereum blockchain, echoes a fundamental truth: control is an illusion. The system will evolve, often in unforeseen ways. As Claude Shannon observed, “Communication is the conveyance of a designed message, however imperfectly understood.” The inherent ‘imperfection’ isn’t a bug, but a feature; the blockchain, like any complex system, doesn’t prevent tampering, it merely makes it observable and auditable. Each block added is a testament to the system’s growth, a record of its unfolding story, even as the original intent becomes obscured by the passage of time and inevitable adaptation.
What Comes Next?
This work, predictably, does not solve integrity. It relocates the problem. The chain of trust merely extends, now encompassing not just the firmware itself, but the entirety of the Ethereum infrastructure, its consensus mechanisms, and the economic incentives of its participants. Each deploy is a small apocalypse – a new set of vulnerabilities introduced alongside the intended security. The framework doesn’t eliminate attack surfaces; it creates a different, more distributed one. One hopes future iterations account for the cost, both financial and energetic, of perpetually hashing firmware images for eternity.
The elegance of cryptographic verification should not obscure the fundamental issue: reliance on external oracles. Any system relying on a blockchain for integrity is, at its core, a question of who is trusted – shifted from the manufacturer to the miners, validators, and ultimately, the network itself. Research will inevitably focus on minimizing this dependency, perhaps through zero-knowledge proofs or other mechanisms that reduce the amount of data committed to the chain. Though it feels almost quaint to speak of ‘solutions’ in this space.
Documentation, of course, will be the first casualty. No one writes prophecies after they come true. The true measure of success won’t be the system’s theoretical security, but its resilience in the face of inevitable compromise. And how gracefully the inevitable failure is absorbed into the larger, messy ecosystem of interconnected systems.
Original article: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.08091.pdf
Contact the author: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avetisyan/
See also:
- The Winter Floating Festival Event Puzzles In DDV
- Top 8 UFC 5 Perks Every Fighter Should Use
- Best Video Game Masterpieces Of The 2000s
- USD COP PREDICTION
- Roblox 1 Step = $1 Codes
- Jujutsu Kaisen: Why Megumi Might Be The Strongest Modern Sorcerer After Gojo
- How To Load & Use The Prototype In Pathologic 3
- Upload Labs: Beginner Tips & Tricks
- Jujutsu: Zero Codes (December 2025)
- Best JRPGs With Great Replay Value
2026-01-14 22:00