Blockchain and Access Control Encryption-Empowered IoT Knowledge Sharing for Cloud-Edge Orchestrated Personalized Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning

Abstract

Federated learning (FL) is emerging as a powerful paradigm for distributed data mining in the context of Internet of Things (IoT) big data. It addresses privacy concerns associated with data outsourcing by enabling local data training and knowledge (i.e., model) sharing. However, simplistic local knowledge sharing can inadvertently expose user privacy to advanced attacks, such as model inversion or gradient leakage. Furthermore, achieving fine-grained and personalized privacy protection for IoT users remains a challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel solution called hierarchical blockchain-empowered cloud-edge orchestrated federated learning (HBCE-FL) to address these challenges. HBCE-FL is designed to provide secure, intelligent, and distributed data analysis for IoT users. To tackle FL’s privacy issues, we develop a multi-level access control encryption and blockchain-based approach for sharing IoT knowledge within the HBCE-FL framework. Our approach classifies IoT users into different levels based on their individual privacy requirements, enabling fine-grained privacy protection. The blockchain is employed for identity authentication, key management, and message sanitization. For scenarios involving IoT users with non-IID data, we integrate federated multi-task learning into HBCE-FL to ensure fairness, robustness, and privacy. Finally, we conduct experiments using classic MNIST and CIFAR10 datasets to validate our approach. The experimental results illustrate that HBCE-FL effectively achieves personalized privacy-preserving FL without losing IoT data availability. Regardless of whether IoT data are homogeneous or heterogeneous, our approach enhances model accuracy and convergence rates by enabling secure IoT knowledge access and sharing for IoT users.