LRA: A Lightweight Reputation-Based Authentication Framework for Secure IoT-Driven E-Commerce Supply Chain Management

M. P. Amulya; N. Nandini

doi:10.48084/etasr.18062

Authors

M. P. Amulya Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dr. Ambedkar Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belagavi, Karnataka, India
N. Nandini Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dr. Ambedkar Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belagavi, Karnataka, India

Volume: 16 | Issue: 3 | Pages: 36497-36504 | June 2026 | https://doi.org/10.48084/etasr.18062

Received: 9 February 2026 | Revised: 23 April 2026 | Accepted: 30 April 2026 | Online: 6 June 2026

Corresponding author: M. P. Amulya

Abstract

The rapid integration of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into e-commerce supply chains introduces critical challenges in security, trust management, and workflow efficiency. Existing blockchain-assisted authentication schemes, such as SPUFCHAIN, suffer from high computational overhead, scalability limitations, and vulnerability to reputation manipulation in resource-constrained environments. To address these issues, this paper presents Lightweight Reputation-based Authentication (LRA), a decentralized trust management framework that combines dynamic reputation evaluation with blockchain-backed immutable storage. The proposed model incorporates direct and indirect trust computation enhanced by historical consistency, fluctuation minimization, and stability factors to ensure reliable authentication. Smart contracts are utilized for automated trust updates and secure workflow validation. The performance of LRA was evaluated using the CICIoV2024 dataset, which simulates realistic adversarial scenarios, including spoofing and denial-of-service attacks, in IoT-enabled environments. Experimental results demonstrate that LRA achieves higher detection rates, significantly reduces misclassification rates, and improves normalized throughput compared to SPUFCHAIN. These findings confirm that LRA provides a scalable, efficient, and secure authentication solution for IoT-driven e-commerce supply chain management systems.

Keywords:

blockchain, e-commerce supply chain, Internet of Things (IoT), lightweight authentication, reputation system, performance optimization

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