A Blockchain-Enabled Approach for Online Stream Sensor Data Protection in Cyber-Physical Manufacturing Systems

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things and information technologies, more and more manufacturing systems become cyber-enabled, which significantly improves the flexibility and productivity of manufacturing. Furthermore, a large variety of online sensors are also commonly incorporated in the manufacturing systems for online quality monitoring and control. However, the cyber-enabled environment may pose the collected online stream sensor data under high risks of cyber-physical attacks as well. Specifically, cyber-physical attacks could occur during the manufacturing process to maliciously tamper the sensor data, which could result in false alarms or failures of anomaly detection. In addition, the cyber-physical attacks may also illegally access the collected data without authorization and cause leakage of key information. Therefore, it becomes critical to develop an effective approach to protect online stream data from these attacks so that the cyber-physical security of the manufacturing systems could be assured. To achieve this goal, an integrative blockchain-enabled method, is proposed by leveraging both asymmetry encryption and camouflage techniques. A real-world case study that protects cyber-physical security of collected stream data in additive manufacturing is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results demonstrate that malicious tampering could be detected in a relatively short time and the risk of unauthorized data access is significantly reduced as well.