Security vulnerabilities in Information communication technology: Blockchain to the rescue (A survey on Blockchain Technology)

Abstract

With the increasing concerns about the security of data, Blockchain a decentralised public ledger, linked block structure which verifies and stores data and follows trusted consensus algorithms which ensure synchronisation of data in a distributed peer to peer network acquired a lot of attention as well as discussions recently. As it makes sure a tamper-proof digital platform for decision-making processes to store and share data among different individuals, authorities and organisations who do not trust each other. This technology is considered as the future of data security and integrity and is expected to serve in a lot of new or existing potential application, so the motive of this paper is to present insights of blockchain's architecture, it's security background, and it elaborate the two versions of blockchain: permissioned and permission-less. and some of its applications. Moreover, the first decentralized cryptocurrency and a public ledger named bitcoin are also elaborated in this paper. Furthermore, we summarize some typical implementations in blockchain, the lifecycle of bitcoin and explore future research challenges that still need to be addressed in order to preserve privacy when blockchain is used.