Blockchain Technology for IoT Security and Trust: A Comprehensive SLR
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease find attached my comments on how to improve the paper.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable feedback and insights, which have been instrumental in refining our manuscript. We have addressed each of your comments in detail, and our responses are provided in the attached file.
Please download the attachment for a comprehensive response to each point raised.
Warm regards,
Seetah Almarri
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper tries to do a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), but it does not follow all the proper steps. While the topic is good, there are several important issues with how the review was done.
The authors claim to have conducted an SLR, but the process is incomplete. The SLR should include planning, conducting, and reporting the review properly, but these steps seem to be missing or not fully done.
The search terms used to find relevant studies are not detailed enough. An SLR requires using a wide range of keywords to ensure all important studies are found. In this case, the search terms are too simple and may have missed important studies.
The paper doesn’t explain how the authors chose the studies for the review. In an SLR, it’s necessary to provide clear reasons for including or excluding papers. Also, the list of studies included in the review should be added to the appendix so readers can see which papers were selected.
The authors didn’t discuss any potential problems or biases (called "threats to validity") in their review. In an SLR, it’s important to talk about any issues that might affect the reliability of the review.
The paper is missing important statistics from the SLR process. These include the number of studies found, filtered, and selected. Without these details, it’s hard to understand how the review was done.
The paper doesn’t explain the SLR methods in enough detail. A proper SLR needs to clearly describe how research questions were formed, how studies were searched for, how they were screened, and how data was collected.
To conclude, the paper is not ready for publication because of these major issues with the SLR method. The authors should carefully follow the correct steps for an SLR, such as using more detailed search terms, providing a list of selected papers in an appendix, adding SLR statistics, and discussing possible problems with validity. Fixing these issues will make the review stronger.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
satisfactory
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable feedback and insights, which have been instrumental in refining our manuscript. We have addressed each of your comments in detail, and our responses are provided in the attached file.
Please download the attachment for a comprehensive response to each point raised.
Warm regards,
Seetah Almarri
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper effectively explores blockchain for IoT security. The abstract should emphasize key findings, and the introduction needs clearer objectives. Strengthen novelty by comparing related works more deeply. Add details on cryptographic techniques and blockchain’s role in securing IoT layers.
Figures need more descriptive captions. Include practical examples for IoT integration challenges and sustainability. Clarify SLR criteria and expand future research directions on consensus mechanisms. Correct minor grammatical errors and simplify sentences for better clarity. These changes will enhance the paper’s impact.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable feedback and insights, which have been instrumental in refining our manuscript. We have addressed each of your comments in detail, and our responses are provided in the attached file.
Please download the attachment for a comprehensive response to each point raised.
Warm regards,
Seetah Almarri
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper explores how blockchain technology can address security and trust challenges in the Internet of Things. It provides a comprehensive review of blockchain's role in enhancing IoT security through transparency, decentralization, and immutability, while highlighting its advantages such as identity management and prevention of data manipulation, along with future directions for integrating blockchain with IoT systems.
I found the review provided by the authors very interesting. However, the manuscript presents some issues that need to be addressed.
1) In Section 4.1 when the authors mention the "Application Layer" they do not mention the protocols that can be adopted at this layer (such as HTTP, MQTT, CoAP, and so on). I believe the authors should mention these protocols
2) In Figure 2 the authors consider at the "Network Layer" just WiFi. This is misleading since there are many communication protocols that are used at the network layer in the IoT context.
3) In Section 4.2, the authors just mention the Attacks against HTTP. No Attacks against other protocols (such as MQTT and CoAP) are mentioned. For instance, in MQTT there are intrinsic security Issues due to the presence of the broker in the middle of the communication. If this broker is untrusted it may read and alter all the exchanged traffic. Additionally, these Issues cannot be solved via well-known security solutions due to the decoupling principle. The authors should at least briefly discuss this through proper references
4) Although I appreciate the effort made by the authors to perform a thorough review of the Attacks in the IoT domain the authors should mention recent studies about these attacks in the IoT context. I believe mentioning these studies (whenever possible) would improve the comprehensiveness of the review.
For instance, I suggest the authors refer to the following works:
-https://doi.org/10.1145/3487552.3487830 (for man-in-the-middle attacks, specifically this work provides a study on how the TLS protocol can be completely broken, along with some practical experiments)
-https://doi.org/10.1109/PerCom59722.2024.10494466 (for replay attacks, specifically this work provides some results on how this vulnerability is spread among IoT devices)
5) Figure 4 should be smaller.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable feedback and insights, which have been instrumental in refining our manuscript. We have addressed each of your comments in detail, and our responses are provided in the attached file.
Please download the attachment for a comprehensive response to each point raised.
Warm regards,
Seetah Almarri
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsWell done! Most of the corrections have been treated.
There are still some citations with the authors' first name and last name mentioned.
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI would like to thank the authors for their thorough work on this manuscript. The authors have addressed all my concerns effectively, and the paper is now suitable for acceptance in its present form.
