In the Internet of Things (IoT), a cyber physical system (CPS) has achieved great success in a wide range of distributed integration environments. In the cyber physical system (CPS), interconnected sensing devices collect data in the surrounding environment and send data to all interested nodes through the network, thereby sharing all nodes data. This process can be implemented by using a publish/subscribe (pub/sub for short) system. Providing the basic security mechanisms such as authorization and confidentiality is a challenge due to the loose coupling of subscribers and publishers in such a pub/sub system. At the meanwhile, the existing IoT ecosystem mostly relies on a centralized server and thus faces the problem of single point failure. Thus, it is interesting to realize a brokerless or decentralized pub/sub model. Inspired by this motivation, this paper mainly proposes a privacy-preserving publish/subscribe model by using the blockchain technique, which evades the centralized trustroot setting and the problem of single point failure. Another key point of our proposal is that the primitive of public key encryption with equality test (PKEwET) is employed to enable all the required authorization, communication and topics matching can be finished in a confidential manner. Finally, a lightweight prototype of our proposal is implemented by using web3j, and the security and efficiency analysis are also presented.
Raheel Ahmed Memon, Jianping Li, Muhammad Irshad Nazeer, Ahmad Neyaz Khan · 5 authors
Integration of blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) to build a secure, trusted and robust communication technology is currently of great interest for research communities and industries. But challenge is to identify the appropriate position of blockchain in current settings of IoT with minimal consequences. In this article we propose a blockchain-based DualFog-IoT architecture with three configuration filter of incoming requests at access level, namely: Real Time, Non-Real Time, and Delay Tolerant Blockchain applications. The DualFog-IoT segregate the Fog layer into two: Fog Cloud Cluster and Fog Mining Cluster. Fog Cloud Cluster and the main cloud datacenter work in a tandem similar to existing IoT architecture for real-time and non-real-time application requests, while the additional Fog Mining Cluster is dedicated to deal with only Delay Tolerant Blockchain application requests. The proposed DualFog-IoT is compared with existing centralized datacenter based IoT architecture. Along with the inherited features of blockchain, the proposed model decreases system drop rate, and further offload the cloud datacenter with minimal upgradation in existing IoT ecosystem. The reduced computing load from cloud datacenter doesn't only help in saving the capital and operational expenses, but it is also a huge contribution for saving energy resources and minimizing carbon emission in environment. Furthermore, the proposed DualFog-IoT is also being analyzed for optimization of computing resources at cloud level, the results presented shows the feasibility of proposed architecture under various ratios of incoming RT and NRT requests. However, the integration of blockchain has its footprints in terms of latent response for delay tolerant blockchain applications, but real-time and non-real-time requests are gracefully satisfying the service level agreement.
Antonio Clim, Răzvan Daniel Zota, Radu Constantinescu
The most important aspect of handling data in the healthcare industry is its seamless and secure transition across intercepting nodes. Effective elimination of third-party entities and ensuring direct links between patient and healthcare provider can result in the transmission of error-free, unduplicated data. The use of blockchains can open up opportunities to counter the current requirements due to their ability to safely share information across nodes and networks from the access point and secure the safety of transactions. Currently, sharing medical data is observed to be slow, incomplete, insecure, and provider-centric. These shortcomings prevent data interoperability and are a consequence of lack of foundational, structural, and semantic inoperability. By applying the blockchain technologies with appropriate markers, the safety of patient data can be ensured during data transmission. This paper evaluates the potential use of blockchain technology in association with mobile-based healthcare applications.
With the rapid development of the Internet and the Internet of Things, product recall, especially pharmaceutical recall, have attracted various stakeholders as a phase of product service. However, there are some the long-term problems on pharmaceutical recall, such as low effectiveness, seldom transparent, data can be tampered easily and so on. We have proposed a service system of pharmaceutical recall based on blockchain to solve these problems. The solution runs through the entire recall process that includes decision making, the OOS/OOT investigation, the action of working group and the Corrective and Preventative Action (CAPA). Through the management of recall, we are capable of shortening time, enhancing transparency and protecting the integrity of data in pharmaceutical recall.
Jan 1, 2019·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
With the advent of blockchain technology, some management tasks of IoT networks can be moved from central systems to distributed validation authorities. Cloud-centric blockchain implementations for IoT have shown satisfactory performance. However, some features of blockchain are not necessary for IoT. For instance, a competitive consensus. This research presents the idea of customizing and encapsulating the features of blockchain into software-defined components to host them on edge devices. Thus, blockchain resources can be provisioned by edge devices (e-miners) working together closer to the things layer in a cooperative manner. This research uses Edison SoC as e-miners to test the software-defined blockchain components.
Both blockchain technologies and cloud computing are contemporary emerging technologies. While the application of Blockchain technologies is being spread beyond cryptocurrency, cloud computing is also seeing a paradigm shift to meet the needs of the 4th industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). New technological ad-vancement, especially by the fusion of these two, such as Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS), is considered to be able to significantly generate values to the en-terprises. This article surveys the current status of BaaS in terms of technological development, applications, market potentials and so forth. An evaluative judge-ment, comparing amongst various BaaS platforms, has been presented, along with the trajectory of adoption, challenges and risk factors. Finally, the study suggests standardisation of available BaaS platforms.
Research in the field of blockchain technology and applications is increasing at a fast pace. Although the Bitcoin whitepaper by Nakamoto is already ten years old, the field can still be seen as immature and at an early stage. Current research in this area is lacking a commonly shared knowledge and consensus about terms used to describe the technology and its properties. At the same time this research is challenging fundamental aspects of the Bitcoin core concept. It has to be questioned whether all of these new approaches still adequately could be described as blockchain technology. We propose to use the term Decentralized Consensus Technology as a general category instead. Decentralized Consensus Technology consists of decentralized ledger and non-ledger technologies. Blockchain technology in turn is only one of multiple implementations of the Decentralized Ledger Technology. Furthermore, we identified three main characteristics of Decentralized Consensus Technology: decentralization, trustlessness and ability to eventually reach consensus. Depending on the use case of the specific implementation the following additional properties have to be considered: privacy, participation incentive, irreversibility and immutability, operation purpose, confirmation time, transaction costs, ability to externalize transactions and computations and scalability possibilities.
Thattapon Surasak, Nungnit Wattanavichean, Chakkrit Preuksakarn, Scott C.-H.
In this paper, we successfully designed and de-veloped Thai agriculture products traceability system using blockchain and Internet of Things. Blockchain, which is the distributed database, is used for our proposed traceability system to enhance the transparency and data integrity. OurSQL is added on another layer to easier query process of blockchain database, therefore the proposed system is a user-friendly system, which cannot be found in ordinary blockchain database. The website and android application have been developed to show the tracking information of the product. The blockchain database coupling with Internet of Things give a number of benefits for our traceability system because all of the collecting information is in real-time and kept in a very secured database. Our system could have a huge impact on food traceability and supply chain management become more reliable as well as rebuild public awareness in Thailand on food safety and quality control.
Resource sharing among vehicles can highly improve the capability and efficiency of Internet of Vehicles (IoV). However, it is challenging to establish trust and preserve privacy during the resource sharing process because of the high mobility and topological variability in IoV. Emerging blockchain technology expresses the excellent performance in handling distributed trust due to its verifiable and immutable ledger. In this paper, we first propose a consortium blockchain-based resource sharing paradigm in IoV, in which the resource sharing interactions are encapsulated as transactions and recorded by Road Side Units (RSUs). Moreover, a lightweight consensus mechanism named as Proof-of-Reputation is proposed to reduce computational power consumption and motivate vehicles involved in resource sharing. Finally a differentiated resource pricing scheme is proposed based on the dynamic match game of resource demand and supply. The reputation value is designed to indicate the trustworthy degree of vehicles, and the trust is established via the consensus procedure. We couple the resource sharing process and consensus together by utilizing the reputation value of each vehicle. The security and privacy analysis as well as simulation experiments on communication performance can verify the efficiency of the proposed blockchain system.
Bushra Hameed, Muhammad Murad, Abdul Noman, Muhammad Umar Javed · 8 authors
Blockchain is a decentralized and shared dis-tributed ledger that records the transaction history done by totally different nodes within the whole network. The technology is practically used in the field of education for record-keeping, digital certification, etc. There have already been several papers published on this, but no one can’t find a single paper covering the blockchain-based educational projects. So, There is a gap of latest trends to education. Blockchain-based educational projects resolve the issues of today’s educators. On that basis, we conclude that there is a need for conducting a systematic literature review. This study, therefore, reviews the artistic gap between these two based on educational projects. For this purpose, the paper focuses on exploring some block-chain based projects and protocols that are used in these projects. It also analyses the block-chain features that are being used and the services are offered by the existing educational projects using block-chain features to improve the execution of this technology in education.
Jan 1, 2019·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Nowadays, Blockchain Technologies (BCT) could be characterized as one of the most promising trends. We are currently witnessing a plethora of implementations basically in the economic sector with the creation of cryptocurrencies. The majority of researchers and practitioners argues that many benefits could be derived from the use of this innovative technology with the most significant one being the improved sense of trust to BCT applications. At the same time governments pursue amplified trust from their citizens and BCT is gaining momentum since it addresses this of utmost importance problem based on its unique characteristics. More and more governments realize the advances of this technology and participate in pilot applications in different vertical governmental sectors. Even though there are several implementations in the Government sector, there is no comprehensive study towards the analysis of the major characteristics of these developments. This paper moves towards the fulfilment of this gap conducting a thorough analysis of e-Government pilot applications of BCT in a European level. Furthermore, this study discusses the key benefits and main barriers coming from the application of this technology in different domains with BCT experts.
In this research paper, blockchain-based trust management model is proposed to enhance trust relationship among beacon nodes and to eradicate malicious nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). This composite trust evaluation involves behavioral-based trust as well as data-based trust. Various metrics such as closeness, honesty, intimacy and frequency of interaction are taken into account to compute behavioral-based trust of beacon nodes. Further, the composite (behavior and data) trust value of each beacon nodes is broadcast to Base Stations (BS) to generate a blockchain of trust values. Subsequently, the management model discards the beacon node with least trust value and that ensures reliability and consistency of localization in WSNs. The simulated results of the proposed algorithm are compared with the existing ones in terms of detection accuracy, False Positive Rate (FPR) and False Negative Rate (FNR) and Average Energy Consumption (AEC).
This paper presents a blockchain enabled secure data acquisition scheme utilizing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm where data are collected from the Internet of Things (IoT) devices and subsequently, forwarded to the nearest server through the UAV swarm. Before initiating data acquisition, the UAV swarm shares a shared key with the IoT devices in order to maintain communications. However, prior to transmitting data, the IoT devices encrypt the data and forward it to the UAV swarm. Upon receiving the data, the UAV swarm implements a two-phase validation utilizing the π-hash bloom filter and the digital signature algorithm to validate the sender; in addition, prior to forwarding data to the nearest server, it performs encryption. However, before adding data in blockchain, consent from all validators is required. Finally, the data are stored in blockchain with the approval of validators. A security analysis is performed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed scheme. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is manifested through the implementation and simulation. The security analysis and the performance results show that UAV assist the IoT devices both in terms of connectivity and energy consumption, and provides security against the threats mentioned in the paper.
The relative low level of smart home system (SHS) device information security may threaten the privacy of users. In this paper, we propose a homomorphic consortium blockchain for SHS sensitive data privacy preserving (HCB-SDPP), which is based on the traditional smart home system. We add verification services, which are composed of verification nodes, to our model to verify working nodes and transactions in SHS. In order to record the SHS device information transaction, we propose a new block data structure based on homomorphic encryption (HEBDS). Using the HCB-SDPP model, we design an encrypted algorithm based on Paillier encrypted for privacy protection. To verify the validity of the HCB-SDPP model, we firstly encrypt sensitive data of all gateway peers and upload them to the consortium blockchain. Then, we validate the security of sensitive data after homomorphic encryption processing. In the experiment, we also design attack experiments to attack different types of peers on the consortium blockchain in the HCB-SDPP model. If these nodes are insecure, the influence on the whole model will be analyzed. The simulation result shows that the HCB-SDPP model can protect customer privacy more effectively than SHS.
A Potential solution for solving forensic is the use of blockchain in software-defined networking (SDN). The blockchain is a distributed peer-to-peer network that can be utilized on SDN-based Internet of Things (IoT) environments for security provisioning. Hence, to meet some challenges in digital forensics such as data integrity, evidence deletion or alteration, blockchain is used. However, some problems such as poor attack detection and slow processing existed in previous works. To address these issues, an efficient forensics architecture is proposed in SDN-IoT that establishes the Chain of Custody (CoC) in blockchain technology. The proposed SDN-based IoT architecture is initiated with flow table rules on switches for the three different traffics Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP). In this work, overloaded switches migrate the packets to nearby switches to balance the packet flow. The packets disobeying flow rules will be discarded by switches. The blockchain-based distributed controller in this forensic architecture is designed to use the Linear Homomorphic Signature (LHS) algorithm for validating users. Each controller is fed with a classifier that uses the Neuro Multi-fuzzy to classify malicious packets based on packet features. The logs of events are used and stored on the blockchain in the proposed SDN-IoT architecture. We evaluated the performance of our forensic architecture and compared it to the existing model using various performance measures. Our evaluation results demonstrate performance improvement by reducing delay, response time and processing time, increasing throughput, accuracy, and security parameters.
Riya Thakore, Rajkumar Vaghashiya, Chintan Patel, Nishant Doshi
Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT), two of the top disruptive technologies, are already on their way of reshaping our future of the digital world, characterized by a drastic change in the current network architecture. Incorporation of IoT has brought the objects around us to life, making them ‘smart’ and capable of communicating with each other, thereby amassing massive data by constantly capturing the physical world, for analyzing and performing some intelligent action based on the same. It has made possible our dream of seamless integration of the digital and physical worlds, changing the very essence of our perception of the physical world. But, the problem with current IoT solutions is its need for a centralized party (like a cloud server), for connecting and communicating via the Internet, which poses a great threat to the privacy and security of the vast sensitive data being generated, whereas the original architecture design demands for a decentralized one like distributed or peer-to- peer (P2P) system. So, blockchain comes into play, providing a secure and trustworthy way of sharing information using a distributed/P2P model, to achieve transparency, security, privacy, auditability, resilience, access authentication, data immutability, etc. In this paper, we will look into how to combine both the technologies to overcome their shortcomings and obtain a greater gain from their benefits. We have presented a comprehensive survey on the basics of both the technologies, and the blockchain-based IoT (BIoT) architecture, protocols and functioning, and few examples BIoT applications that can be built on top of it, and comparison.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
The blockchain is a distributed ledger managed by a peer to peer network that stores all transaction records. The distributed ledger technology offers new possibilities, promising to ensure that data is secure, decentralized and incomparable. In the Architecture, Engineering, Construction (AEC) industry, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has quickly become a standard platform where all parties work together on a single and shared model for collaboration. The issues of Supply Chain Management (SCM) within BIM can be identified in BIM maturity level, based on PAS1193 that developed through Common Data Environment (CDE). The research strategy is to make model and simulation of SCM using BIM and create CDE to become decentralized and integrate the blockchain technology. The smart contract system validates every material and configuration of components within the model from the design stage until the operation stage. Traceability and auditability through an immutable historic eventually be more visible and allow real-time tracking of a material to a construction site providing a history from the origin.
Deepak Puthal, Saraju P. Mohanty, Priyadarsi Nanda, Elias Kougianos · 5 authors
Resource -constrained distributed systems such as the Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing and fog computing are deployed for real-time monitoring and evaluation. Current security solutions are problematic when there is a centralized controlling entity. The blockchain provides decentralized security architectures using proof-of-work (PoW). Proof-of-work is an expensive process for IoT and edge computing due to the deployment of resource-constrained devices. This paper presents a novel consensus algorithm called Proof-of-Authentication (PoAh) to replace Proof-of-Work and introduce authentication in such environments to make the blockchain application-specific. This paper implemented the Proof-of-Authentication system to evaluate its sustainability and applicability for the IoT and edge computing. The evaluation process is conducted in both simulation and real-time testbeds to evaluate performance. Finally, the process of Proof-of-Authentication and its integration with blockchain in resource-constrained distributed systems is discussed. Our proposed PoAh, while running in limited computer resources (e.g. single-board computing devices like the Raspberry Pi) has a latency in the order of 3 secs.
This paper attempts to solve the security problems in communication, consensus-making and authentication of nodes in the Internet of vehicles (IoV) for intelligent transport. Considering the defects of the central node and service complexity in the IoV, the blockchain was integrated with the IoV to create a decentralized mechanism for communication and consensus-making. In the architecture of the blockchain-based IoV, the Byzantine consensus algorithm based on time sequence and gossip protocol is used to complete information communication and consensus authentication, which not only ensures communication security, improves the consensus efficiency of nodes, but also improves the fault tolerance of the algorithm. The experimental results show that our algorithm outshined the traditional authentication method in information security and consensus efficiency of the IoV. The research findings provide a reference solution to the authentication problems in the IoV for intelligent transport.
Razi Iqbal, Talal Ashraf Butt, Muhammad Afzaal, Khaled Salah
The Internet of things is the next stage in the evolution of the Internet that is being materialized with the integration of billions of smart objects. The state-of-the-art communication technologies have enabled the previously isolated devices to become an active part of the Internet. This constant connectivity opens new avenues for novel applications such as the realization of social Internet of things and its subdomain the social Internet of vehicles. Socializing requires sharing of information that entails trust, especially in an open and broad social environment. This article highlights the key factors involved in conceptualizing an efficient trust model for social Internet of vehicles. Furthermore, it focuses on the unique challenges involved in designing the trust models for social Internet of vehicles. Several trust models exist in literature; however, most of the existing trust models are specific to their domains, for example, Internet of things, social Internet of things, or general vehicular networks. This article presents a brief review of the trust models that have the potential to be implemented in Social Internet of vehicles. Finally, the authors present an overview of how trending concepts and emerging technologies like blockchain and fog computing can assist in developing a trust-based social Internet of vehicles model for high-efficiency, decentralized architecture and dynamic nature of vehicular networks.
Please cite this article. Tanweer Alam. "IoT-Fog: A Communication Framework using Blockchain in the Internet of Things.", International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering (IJRTE). Vol. 7(6), 2019. AbstractThe fog computing is the emerging technology to compute, store, control and connecting smart devices with each other using cloud computing. The Internet of Things (IoT) is an architecture of uniquely identified interrelated physical things, these physical things are able to communicate with each other and can transmit and receive information. This research presents a framework of the combination of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Fog computing. The blockchain is also the emerging technology that provides a hyper, distributed, public, authentic ledger to record the transactions. Blockchains technology is a secured technology that can be a boon for the next generation computing. The combination of fog, blockchains, and IoT creates a new opportunity in this area. In this research, the author presents a middleware framework based on the blockchain, fog, and IoT. The framework is implemented and tested. The results are found positive. Keywords: Internet of Things (IoT), Fog Computing, Cloud Computing, Blockchains, Communication Security.
Nikos Fotiou, Vasilios A. Siris, Spyros Voulgaris, George C. Polyzos · 5 authors
We address the limitations of existing information security solutions when applied to the cyber-physical world. In particular, we consider the case of Internet of Things (IoT) actuation and we argue that it is hard to secure such a process. To this end, we propose a "damage control" approach, where service time is divided into slots and users perform microservice transactions, paying essentially in advance for each one, corresponding to one service slot. Under these circumstances, in the case of service disruption, a user, in the worst case, may lose the amount of money that corresponds to a single micro-service transaction in a single time slot. We implement our solution by leveraging blockchain-based smart contracts, off-chain payments, and one-time Hash-based Message Authentication Code (HMAC) passwords. Our solution supports IoT devices with limited processing capabilities and which are not necessarily connected to the Internet. Moreover, with our solution, IoT devices do not interact directly with the blockchain. In fact, they are oblivious to the use of blockchain technology. They do not store any usersensitive information, neither are payments made to or is value stored on the devices.