Blockchain Papers

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Feb 8, 2021·arXiv (Cornell University)
0 cites
$\scriptstyle{BASALT}$: A Rock-Solid Foundation for Epidemic Consensus Algorithms in Very Large, Very Open Networks

Alex Auvolat, Yérom-David Bromberg, Davide Frey, François Taı̈ani

Recent works have proposed new Byzantine consensus algorithms for blockchains based on epidemics, a design which enables highly scalable performance at a low cost. These methods however critically depend on a secure random peer sampling service: a service that provides a stream of random network nodes where no attacking entity can become over-represented. To ensure this security property, current epidemic platforms use a Proof-of-Stake system to select peer samples. However such a system limits the openness of the system as only nodes with significant stake can participate in the consensus, leading to an oligopoly situation. Moreover, this design introduces a complex interdependency between the consensus algorithm and the cryptocurrency built upon it. In this paper, we propose a radically different security design for the peer sampling service, based on the distribution of IP addresses to prevent Sybil attacks. We propose a new algorithm, $\scriptstyle{BASALT}$, that implements our design using a stubborn chaotic search to counter attackers' attempts at becoming over-represented. We show in theory and using Monte Carlo simulations that $\scriptstyle{BASALT}$ provides samples which are extremely close to the optimal distribution even in adversarial scenarios such as tentative Eclipse attacks. Live experiments on a production cryptocurrency platform confirm that the samples obtained using $\scriptstyle{BASALT}$ are equitably distributed amongst nodes, allowing for a system which is both open and where no single entity can gain excessive power.

Open access
2 source records
Peer-to-Peer Network Technologies
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Complex Network Analysis Techniques
Original source
Feb 8, 2021·arXiv (Cornell University)
2 cites
We might walk together, but I run faster: Network Fairness and Scalability in Blockchains

Anurag Jain, Shoeb Siddiqui, Sujit Gujar

Blockchain-based Distributed Ledgers (DLs) promise to transform the existing financial system by making it truly democratic. In the past decade, blockchain technology has seen many novel applications ranging from the banking industry to real estate. However, in order to be adopted universally, blockchain systems must be scalable to support a high volume of transactions. As we increase the throughput of the DL system, the underlying peer-to-peer network might face multiple levels of challenges to keep up with the requirements. Due to varying network capacities, the slower nodes would be at a relative disadvantage compared to the faster ones, which could negatively impact their revenue. In order to quantify their relative advantage or disadvantage, we introduce two measures of network fairness, $p_f$, the probability of frontrunning and $α_f$, the publishing fairness. We show that as we scale the blockchain, both these measures deteriorate, implying that the slower nodes face a disadvantage at higher throughputs. It results in the faster nodes getting more than their fair share of the reward while the slower nodes (slow in terms of network quality) get less. Thus, fairness and scalability in blockchain systems do not go hand in hand. In a setting with rational miners, lack of fairness causes miners to deviate from the "longest chain rule" or undercut, which would reduce the blockchain's resilience against byzantine adversaries. Hence, fairness is not only a desirable property for a blockchain system but also essential for the security of the blockchain and any scalable blockchain protocol proposed must ensure fairness.

Open access
2 source records
cs.DC
cs.NI
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Original source
Feb 7, 2021·arXiv (Cornell University)
11 cites
What is a Blockchain? A Definition to Clarify the Role of the Blockchain in the Internet of Things

Lorenzo Ghiro, Francesco Restuccia, Salvatore D’Oro, Stefano Basagni · 7 authors

The use of the term blockchain is documented for disparate projects, from\ncryptocurrencies to applications for the Internet of Things (IoT), and many\nmore. The concept of blockchain appears therefore blurred, as it is hard to\nbelieve that the same technology can empower applications that have extremely\ndifferent requirements and exhibit dissimilar performance and security. This\nposition paper elaborates on the theory of distributed systems to advance a\nclear definition of blockchain that allows us to clarify its role in the IoT.\nThis definition inextricably binds together three elements that, as a whole,\nprovide the blockchain with those unique features that distinguish it from\nother distributed ledger technologies: immutability, transparency and\nanonimity. We note however that immutability comes at the expense of remarkable\nresource consumption, transparency demands no confidentiality and anonymity\nprevents user identification and registration. This is in stark contrast to the\nrequirements of most IoT applications that are made up of resource constrained\ndevices, whose data need to be kept confidential and users to be clearly known.\nBuilding on the proposed definition, we derive new guidelines for selecting the\nproper distributed ledger technology depending on application requirements and\ntrust models, identifying common pitfalls leading to improper applications of\nthe blockchain. We finally indicate a feasible role of the blockchain for the\nIoT: myriads of local, IoT transactions can be aggregated off-chain and then be\nsuccessfully recorded on an external blockchain as a means of public\naccountability when required.\n

Open access
3 source records
cs.CR
cs.NI
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Original source
Feb 2, 2021·arXiv
0 cites
Statistical privacy-preserving message dissemination for peer-to-peer networks

David Mödinger, Jan-Hendrik Lorenz, Fanz J. Hauck

Concerns for the privacy of communication is widely discussed in research and overall society. For the public financial infrastructure of blockchains, this discussion encompasses the privacy of transaction data and its broadcasting throughout the network. To tackle this problem, we transform a discrete-time protocol for contact networks over infinite trees into a computer network protocol for peer-to-peer networks. Peer-to-peer networks are modeled as organically growing graphs. We show that the distribution of shortest paths in such a network can be modeled using a normal distribution $\mathcal{N}(μ,σ^2).$ We determine statistical estimators for $μ,σ$ via multivariate models. The model behaves logarithmic over the number of nodes n and proportional to an inverse exponential over the number of added edges k. These results facilitate the computation of optimal forwarding probabilities during the dissemination phase for optimal privacy in a limited information environment.

Open access
cs.NI
Original source
Feb 2, 2021·IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
27 cites
Blockchain-based Transparency Framework for Privacy Preserving Third-party Services

Runhua Xu, Chao Li, James Joshi

Increasingly, information systems rely on computational, storage, and network resources deployed in third-party facilities such as cloud centers and edge nodes. Such an approach further exacerbates cybersecurity concerns constantly raised by numerous incidents of security and privacy attacks resulting in data leakage and identity theft, among others. These have, in turn, forced the creation of stricter security and privacy-related regulations and have eroded the trust in cyberspace. In particular, security-related services and infrastructures, such as Certificate Authorities (CAs) that provide digital certificate services and Third-Party Authorities (TPAs) that provide cryptographic key services, are critical components for establishing trust in crypto-based privacy-preserving applications and services. To address such trust issues, various transparency frameworks and approaches have been recently proposed in the literature. This paper proposes TAB framework that provides transparency and trustworthiness of third-party authority and third-party facilities using blockchain techniques for emerging crypto-based privacy-preserving applications. TAB employs the Ethereum blockchain as the underlying public ledger and also includes a novel smart contract to automate accountability with an incentive mechanism that motivates users to participate in auditing, and punishes unintentional or malicious behaviors. We implement TAB and show through experimental evaluation in the Ethereum official test network, Rinkeby, that the framework is efficient. We also formally show the security guarantee provided by TAB, and analyze the privacy guarantee and trustworthiness it provides.

Open access
2 source records
Cryptography and Data Security
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data
Original source
Jan 29, 2021·arXiv (Cornell University)
13 cites
Blockchain-empowered Data-driven Networks: A Survey and Outlook

Xi Li, Zehua Wang, Victor C. M. Leung, Hong Ji · 6 authors

The paths leading to future networks are pointing towards a data-driven paradigm to better cater to the explosive growth of mobile services as well as the increasing heterogeneity of mobile devices, many of which generate and consume large volumes and variety of data. These paths are also hampered by significant challenges in terms of security, privacy, services provisioning, and network management. Blockchain, which is a technology for building distributed ledgers that provide an immutable log of transactions recorded in a distributed network, has become prominent recently as the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies and is revolutionizing data storage and processing in computer network systems. For future data-driven networks (DDNs), blockchain is considered as a promising solution to enable the secure storage, sharing, and analytics of data, privacy protection for users, robust, trustworthy network control, and decentralized routing and resource managements. However, many important challenges and open issues remain to be addressed before blockchain can be deployed widely to enable future DDNs. In this article, we present a survey on the existing research works on the application of blockchain technologies in computer networks, and identify challenges and potential solutions in the applications of blockchains in future DDNs. We identify application scenarios in which future blockchain-empowered DDNs could improve the efficiency and security, and generally the effectiveness of network services.

Open access
2 source records
cs.NI
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Original source
Jan 26, 2021·arXiv (Cornell University)
29 cites
BE-RAN: Blockchain-enabled Open RAN for 6G with DID and Privacy-Preserving Communication

Hao Xu, Zihan Zhou, Lei Zhang, Yunqing Sun · 5 authors

As 6G networks evolve towards a synergistic system of Communication, Sensing, and Computing, Radio Access Networks become more distributed, necessitating robust end-to-end authentication. We propose Blockchain-enabled Radio Access Networks, a novel decentralized RAN architecture enhancing security, privacy, and efficiency in authentication processes. BE-RAN leverages distributed ledger technology to establish trust, offering user-centric identity management, enabling mutual authentication, and facilitating on-demand point-to-point inter-network elements and UE-UE communication with accountable logging and billing service add-on for public network users, all without relying on centralized authorities. We envision a thoroughly decentralized RAN model and propose a privacy-preserving P2P communication approach that complements existing security measures while supporting the CSC paradigm. Results demonstrate BE-RAN significantly reduces communication and computation overheads, enhances privacy through decentralized identity management, and facilitates CSC integration, advancing towards more efficient and secure 6G networks.

Open access
3 source records
cs.CR
cs.DC
cs.NI
Original source
Jan 23, 2021·arXiv
0 cites
R2P2: Reactive Routing and Payment Protocol for Named Data Network using Blockchain

Yuhang Ye, Brian Lee, Yuansong Qiao

With the continuous emergence of new mobile devices which support new communication paradigms such as D2D and V2V, Internet users can take advantage of these devices to achieve better Internet connectivity and improve service quality. Meanwhile, packet forwarding brings extra costs to devices (e.g. electricity consumption), that hinders the realisation of successful ad-hoc networks. This paper proposes Reactive Routing and Payment Protocol (R2P2) to incentivise mobile devices to contribute idle networking resources and gain monetary returns. The routing and payment protocol is developed for Named-Data Network (NDN) because its content-centric nature can better support the intermittent and ephemeral communication requirements in ad-hoc networks. Blockchain is used as the settlement platform for transactions between devices because of its neutrality, robustness and trust. R2P2 is still an on-going project. The content of this paper focuses on the design of R2P2.

Open access
cs.NI
Original source
Jan 22, 2021·arXiv
0 cites
IoT Data Quality Issues and Potential Solutions: A Literature Review

Taha Mansouri, Mohammad Reza Sadeghi Moghadam, Fatemeh Monshizadeh, Ahad Zareravasan

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a paradigm that connects everyday items to the Internet. In the recent decade, the IoT's spreading popularity is a promising opportunity for people and industries. IoT utilizes in a wide range of respects such as agriculture, healthcare, smart cities, and manufacturing sectors. IoT data quality is crucial in IoT real-life applications. IoT data quality dimensions and issues should be considered because we require data to make accurate and timely decisions, produce commodities, and gain insights about events, people, and the environment. It is essential to point out that we cannot reach valuable results by using poor quality data. This paper aims to develop a new category for IoT data quality. Hence, we examine existing IoT data quality dimensions and IoT data quality issues in general and specific domains and IoT data quality dimensions' categories. It is worth considering that categories in the context of IoT are not many. We developed a new category in which IoT data quality dimensions and issues are separated. Concerning this category, we can get familiar with related dimensions and issues in each category. To enhance data quality dimensions and minimize data quality issues, we suggest potential solutions using Blockchain to overcome IoT's security issues.

Open access
cs.NI
Original source
Jan 21, 2021·arXiv
16 cites
Saguaro: An Edge Computing-Enabled Hierarchical Permissioned Blockchain

Mohammad Javad Amiri, Ziliang Lai, Liana Patel, Boon Thau Loo · 6 authors

We present Saguaro, a permissioned blockchain system designed specifically for edge computing networks. Saguaro leverages the hierarchical structure of edge computing networks to reduce the overhead of wide-area communication by presenting several techniques. First, Saguaro proposes coordinator-based and optimistic protocols to process cross-domain transactions with low latency where the lowest common ancestor of the involved domains coordinates the protocol or detects inconsistency. Second, data are collected over hierarchy enabling higher-level domains to aggregate their sub-domain data. Finally, transactions initiated by mobile edge devices are processed without relying on high-level fog and cloud servers. Our experimental results across a wide range of workloads demonstrate the scalability of Saguaro in supporting a range of cross-domain and mobile transactions.

Open access
2 source records
cs.DB
cs.NI
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Original source
Jan 20, 2021·arXiv
0 cites
TaNTIN: Terrestrial and Non-Terrestrial Integrated Networks-A collaborative technologies perspective for beyond 5G and 6G

Muhammad Waseem Akhtar, Syed Ali Hassan

The world is moving toward globalization rapidly. Everybody has easy access to information with the spread of Internet technology. Businesses are growing beyond national borders. Internationalization affects every aspect of life. In this scenario, by dispersing functions and tasks across organizational borders, time and space, global organizations have higher requirements for collaboration. In order to allow decision-makers and knowledge workers, situated at different times and spaces, to work more efficiently, collaborative technologies are needed. In this paper, we give an overview of potential collaborative technologies, their benefits, risks and challenges, types, and elements. Based on the conceptualization of terrestrial and non-terrestrial integrated networks (TaNTIN), we highlight artificial intelligence (AI), blockchains, tactile Internet, mobile edge computing (MEC)/fog computing, augmented reality and virtual reality, and so forth as the key features to ensure quality-of-service (QoS) guarantee of futuristic collaborative services such as telemedicine, e-education, online gaming, online businesses, the entertainment industry. We also discuss how these technologies will impact human life in the near future.

Open access
cs.NI
Original source
Jan 16, 2021·arXiv (Cornell University)
1 cites
AGChain: A Blockchain-based Gateway for Trustworthy App Delegation from Mobile App Markets

Mengjie Chen, Yi Xiao, Daoyuan Wu, Jianliang Xu · 6 authors

The popularity of smartphones has led to the growth of mobile app markets, creating a need for enhanced transparency, global access, and secure downloading. This paper introduces AGChain, a blockchain-based gateway that enables trustworthy app delegation within existing markets. AGChain ensures that markets can continue providing services while users benefit from permanent, distributed, and secure app delegation. During its development, we address two key challenges: significantly reducing smart contract gas costs and enabling fully distributed IPFS-based file storage. Additionally, we tackle three system issues related to security and sustainability. We have implemented a prototype of AGChain on Ethereum and Polygon blockchains, achieving effective security and decentralization with a minimal gas cost of around 0.002 USD per app upload (no cost for app download). The system also exhibits reasonable performance with an average overhead of 12%.

Open access
3 source records
cs.CR
cs.NI
Caching and Content Delivery
Original source
Jan 15, 2021·arXiv
0 cites
Cryptoasset Competition and Market Concentration in the Presence of Network Effects

Konstantinos Stylianou, Leonhard Spiegelberg, Maurice Herlihy, Nic Carter

When network products and services become more valuable as their userbase grows (network effects), this tendency can become a major determinant of how they compete with each other in the market and how the market is structured. Network effects are traditionally linked to high market concentration, early-mover advantages, and entry barriers, and in the cryptoasset market they have been used as a valuation tool too. The recent resurgence of Bitcoin has been partly attributed to network effects too. We study the existence of network effects in six cryptoassets from their inception to obtain a high-level overview of the application of network effects in the cryptoasset market. We show that contrary to the usual implications of network effects, they do not serve to concentrate the cryptoasset market, nor do they accord any one cryptoasset a definitive competitive advantage, nor are they consistent enough to be reliable valuation tools. Therefore, while network effects do occur in cryptoasset networks, they are not a defining feature of the cryptoasset market as a whole.

Open access
cs.NI
cs.CY
cs.SI
Original source
Jan 14, 2021·arXiv
0 cites
Leader Confirmation Replication for Millisecond Consensus in Private Chains

Dongjie Zhu, Haiwen Du, Yundong Sun, Zhaoshuo Tian

The private chain-based Internet of Things (IoT) system ensures the security of cross-organizational data sharing. As a widely used consensus model in private chains, the leader-based state-machine replication (SMR) model meets the performance bottleneck in IoT blockchain applications, where nontransactional sensor data are generated on a scale. We analyzed IoT private chain systems and found that the leader maintains too many connections due to high latency and client request frequency, which results in lower consensus performance and efficiency. To meet this challenge, we propose a novel solution for maintaining low request latency and high transactions per second (TPS): replicate nontransactional data by followers and confirm by the leader to achieve nonconfliction SMR, rather than all by the leader. Our solution, named Leader Confirmation Replication (LCR), uses the newly proposed future log and confirmation signal to achieve nontransactional data replication on the followers, thereby reducing the leader's network traffic and the request latency of transactional data. In addition, the generation replication strategy is designed to ensure the reliability and consistency of LCR when meeting membership changes. We evaluated LCR with various cluster sizes and network latencies. Experimental results show that in ms-network latency (2-30) environments, the TPS of LCR is 1.4X-1.9X higher than Raft, the transactional data response time is reduced by 40%-60%, and the network traffic is reduced by 20%-30% with acceptable network traffic and CPU cost on the followers. In addition, LCR shows high portability and availability since it does not change the number of leaders or the election process.

Open access
cs.NI
cs.DC
Original source
Jan 13, 2021·arXiv (Cornell University)
2 cites
Towards Mobile Distributed Ledgers

Dimitris Chatzopoulos, Anurag Jain, Sujit Gujar, Boi Faltings · 5 authors

Advances in mobile computing have paved the way for new types of distributed applications that can be executed solely by mobile devices on device-to-device (D2D) ecosystems (e.g., crowdsensing). Sophisticated applications, like cryptocurrencies, need distributed ledgers to function. Distributed ledgers, such as blockchains and directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), employ consensus protocols to add data in the form of blocks. However, such protocols are designed for resourceful devices that are interconnected via the Internet. Moreover, existing distributed ledgers are not deployable to D2D ecosystems since their storage needs are continuously increasing. In this work, we introduce and analyse Mneme, a DAG-based distributed ledger that can be maintained solely by mobile devices. Mneme utilizes two novel consensus protocols: Proof-of-Context (PoC) and Proof-of-Equivalence (PoE). PoC employs users' context to add data on Mneme. PoE is executed periodically to summarize data and produce equivalent blocks that require less storage. We analyze Mneme's security and justify the ability of PoC and PoE to guarantee the characteristics of distributed ledgers: persistence and liveness. Furthermore, we analyze potential attacks from malicious users and prove that the probability of a successful attack is inversely proportional to the square of the number of mobile users who maintain Mneme.

Open access
2 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Opportunistic and Delay-Tolerant Networks
Caching and Content Delivery
Original source
Jan 12, 2021·IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 2021
22 cites
Energy and Cost Efficient Resource Allocation for Blockchain-Enabled NFV

Shiva Kazemi Taskou, Mehdi Rasti, Pedro H. J. Nardelli

Network function virtualization (NFV) is a promising technology to make 5G networks flexible and agile. NFV decreases operators’ OPEX and CAPEX by decoupling the physical hardware from the functions they perform. In NFV, users’ service request can be viewed as a service function chain (SFC) consisting of several virtual network functions (VNFs) which are connected through virtual links. Resource allocation in NFV is done through a centralized authority called NFV Orchestrator (NFVO). This centralized authority suffers from some drawbacks such as single point of failure and security. Blockchain (BC) technology is able to address these problems by decentralizing resource allocation. The drawbacks of NFVO in NFV architecture and the exceptional BC characteristics to address these problems motivate us to focus on NFV resource allocation to users’ SFCs without the need for an NFVO. To this end, we assume there are two types of users: users who send SFC requests (SFC requesting users) and users who perform mining process (miner users). For SFC requesting users, we formulate NFV resource allocation (NFV-RA) problem as a multi-objective problem to minimize the energy consumption and utilized resource cost, simultaneously. To address this problem, we propose an Approximation-based Resource Allocation algorithm (ARA) using Majorization-Minimization approximation method to convexify NFV-RA problem. Furthermore, due to the high complexity of ARA algorithm, we propose a low complexity Hungarian-based Resource Allocation (HuRA) algorithm using Hungarian algorithm for server allocation. Through the simulation results, we show that our proposed ARA and HuRA algorithms achieve near-optimal performance with lower computational complexity. Also, ARA algorithm outperforms the existing algorithms in terms of number of active servers, energy consumption, and average latency. Moreover, the mining process is the foundation of BC technology. In wireless networks, mining is performed by resource-limited mobile users. Since the mining process requires high computational complexity, miner users cannot perform it alone. So, in this article, we assume that miner users can perform mining process with participating of other users. For mining process, the problem of minimizing the energy consumption and cost of users’ processing resources is formulated as a linear programming problem that can be optimally solved in polynomial time.

Open access
2 source records
cs.NI
eess.SY
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Original source
Jan 9, 2021·arXiv (Cornell University)
37 cites
Robust Blockchained Federated Learning with Model Validation and Proof-of-Stake Inspired Consensus

Hang Chen, Syed Ali Asif, Jihong Park, Chien-Chung Shen · 5 authors

Federated learning (FL) is a promising distributed learning solution that only exchanges model parameters without revealing raw data. However, the centralized architecture of FL is vulnerable to the single point of failure. In addition, FL does not examine the legitimacy of local models, so even a small fraction of malicious devices can disrupt global training. To resolve these robustness issues of FL, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based decentralized FL framework, termed VBFL, by exploiting two mechanisms in a blockchained architecture. First, we introduced a novel decentralized validation mechanism such that the legitimacy of local model updates is examined by individual validators. Second, we designed a dedicated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism where stake is more frequently rewarded to honest devices, which protects the legitimate local model updates by increasing their chances of dictating the blocks appended to the blockchain. Together, these solutions promote more federation within legitimate devices, enabling robust FL. Our emulation results of the MNIST classification corroborate that with 15% of malicious devices, VBFL achieves 87% accuracy, which is 7.4x higher than Vanilla FL.

Open access
2 source records
Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data
Stochastic Gradient Optimization Techniques
Cryptography and Data Security
Original source
Jan 4, 2021·Symposium on Cryptocurrency Analysis (SOCCA) 2020
0 cites
Blockchain Privacy Through Merge Avoidance and Mixing Services: a Hardness and an Impossibility Result

Jefferson E. Simoes, Eduardo Ferreira, Daniel S. Menasche, Carlos A. V. Campos

Cryptocurrencies typically aim at preserving the privacy of their users. Different cryptocurrencies preserve privacy at various levels, some of them requiring users to rely on strategies to raise the privacy level to their needs. Among those strategies, we focus on two of them: merge avoidance and mixing services. Such strategies may be adopted on top of virtually any blockchain-based cryptocurrency. In this paper, we show that whereas optimal merge avoidance leads to an NP-hard optimization problem, incentive-compatible mixing services are subject to a certain class of impossibility results. Together, our results contribute to the body of work on fundamental limits of privacy mechanisms in blockchain-based cryptocurrencies.

Open access
cs.CR
cs.NI
Original source
Jan 4, 2021·Symposium on Cryptocurrency Analysis (SOCCA) 2020
0 cites
Crypto-Hotwire: Illegal Blockchain Mining at Zero Cost Using Public Infrastructures

Felipe Ribas Coutinho, Victor Pires, Claudio Miceli, Daniel Sadoc Menasche

Blockchains and cryptocurrencies disrupted the conversion of energy into a medium of exchange. Numerous applications for blockchains and cryptocurrencies are now envisioned for purposes ranging from inventory control to banking applications. Naturally, in order to mine in an economically viable way, regions where energy is plentiful and cheap, e.g., close to hydroelectric plants, are sought. The possibility of converting energy into cash, however, also opens up opportunities for a new kind of cyber attack aimed at illegally mining cryptocurrencies by stealing energy. In this work, we indicate, using data from January and February of 2018 from our university, that such a threat is real, and present a projection of the gains derived from these attacks.

Open access
cs.CR
cs.NI
Original source
Jan 4, 2021·arXiv
0 cites
Fusion of Federated Learning and Industrial Internet of Things: A Survey

Parimala M, Swarna Priya R M, Quoc-Viet Pham, Kapal Dev · 7 authors

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) lays a new paradigm for the concept of Industry 4.0 and paves an insight for new industrial era. Nowadays smart machines and smart factories use machine learning/deep learning based models for incurring intelligence. However, storing and communicating the data to the cloud and end device leads to issues in preserving privacy. In order to address this issue, federated learning (FL) technology is implemented in IIoT by the researchers nowadays to provide safe, accurate, robust and unbiased models. Integrating FL in IIoT ensures that no local sensitive data is exchanged, as the distribution of learning models over the edge devices has become more common with FL. Therefore, only the encrypted notifications and parameters are communicated to the central server. In this paper, we provide a thorough overview on integrating FL with IIoT in terms of privacy, resource and data management. The survey starts by articulating IIoT characteristics and fundamentals of distributive and FL. The motivation behind integrating IIoT and FL for achieving data privacy preservation and on-device learning are summarized. Then we discuss the potential of using machine learning, deep learning and blockchain techniques for FL in secure IIoT. Further we analyze and summarize the ways to handle the heterogeneous and huge data. Comprehensive background on data and resource management are then presented, followed by applications of IIoT with FL in healthcare and automobile industry. Finally, we shed light on challenges, some possible solutions and potential directions for future research.

Open access
cs.NI
cs.AI
Original source
Jan 2, 2021·arXiv
0 cites
Speeding up Block Propagation in Blockchain Network: Uncoded and Coded Designs

Lihao Zhang, Taotao Wang, Soung Chang Liew

We design and validate new block propagation protocols for the peer-to-peer (P2P) network of the Bitcoin blockchain. Despite its strong protection for security and privacy, the current Bitcoin blockchain can only support a low number of transactions per second (TPS). In this work, we redesign the current Bitcoin's networking protocol to increase TPS without changing vital components in its consensus-building protocol. In particular, we improve the compact-block relaying protocol to enable the propagation of blocks containing a massive number of transactions without inducing extra propagation latencies. Our improvements consist of (i) replacing the existing store-and-forward compact-block relaying scheme with a cut-through compact-block relaying scheme; (ii) exploiting rateless erasure codes for P2P networks to increase block-propagation efficiency. Since our protocols only need to rework the current Bitcoin's networking protocol and does not modify the data structures and crypto-functional components, they can be seamlessly incorporated into the existing Bitcoin blockchain. To validate our designs, we perform analysis on our protocols and implement a Bitcoin network simulator on NS3 to run different block propagation protocols. The analysis and experimental results confirm that our new block propagation protocols could increase the TPS of the Bitcoin blockchain by 100x without compromising security and consensus-building.

Open access
cs.NI
cs.CR
Original source
Jan 1, 2021·IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials
486 cites
Security and Privacy for 6G: A Survey on Prospective Technologies and Challenges

Van-Linh Nguyen, Po‐Ching Lin, Bo‐Chao Cheng, Ren‐Hung Hwang · 5 authors

Sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks will have to cope with diverse threats on a space-air-ground integrated network environment, novel technologies, and an accessible user information explosion. However, for now, security and privacy issues for 6G remain largely in concept. This survey provides a systematic overview of security and privacy issues based on prospective technologies for 6G in the physical, connection, and service layers, as well as through lessons learned from the failures of existing security architectures and state-of-the-art defenses. Two key lessons learned are as follows. First, other than inheriting vulnerabilities from the previous generations, 6G has new threat vectors from new radio technologies, such as the exposed location of radio stripes in ultra-massive MIMO systems at Terahertz bands and attacks against pervasive intelligence. Second, physical layer protection, deep network slicing, quantum-safe communications, artificial intelligence (AI) security, platform-agnostic security, real-time adaptive security, and novel data protection mechanisms such as distributed ledgers and differential privacy are the top promising techniques to mitigate the attack magnitude and personal data breaches substantially.

Open access
2 source records
Advanced Wireless Communication Technologies
Wireless Communication Security Techniques
Biometric Identification and Security
Original source
Dec 18, 2020·arXiv
0 cites
I-Health: Leveraging Edge Computing and Blockchain for Epidemic Management

Alaa Awad Abdellatif, Lutfi Samara, Amr Mohamed, Aiman Erbad · 8 authors

Epidemic situations typically demand intensive data collection and management from different locations/entities within a strict time constraint. Such demand can be fulfilled by leveraging the intensive and easy deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The management and containment of such situations also rely on cross-organizational and national collaboration. Thus, this paper proposes an Intelligent-Health (I-Health) system that aims to aggregate diverse e-health entities in a unique national healthcare system by enabling swift, secure exchange and storage of medical data. In particular, we design an automated patients monitoring scheme, at the edge, which enables the prompt discovery, remote monitoring, and fast emergency response for critical medical events, such as emerging epidemics. Furthermore, we develop a blockchain optimization model that aims to optimize medical data sharing between different health entities to provide effective and secure health services. Finally, we show the effectiveness of our system, in adapting to different critical events, while highlighting the benefits of the proposed I-Health system.

Open access
cs.CY
cs.DC
cs.NI
Original source
Dec 8, 2020·arXiv
0 cites
A Multi-Armed Bandit-based Approach to Mobile Network Provider Selection

Thomas Sandholm, Sayandev Mukherjee

We argue for giving users the ability to lease bandwidth temporarily from any mobile network operator. We propose, prototype, and evaluate a spectrum market for mobile network access, where multiple network operators offer blocks of bandwidth at specified prices for short-term leases to users, with autonomous agents on user devices making purchase decisions by trading off price, performance, and budget constraints. We show that the problem of provider selection can be formulated as a so-called Bandit problem. For the case where providers change prices synchronously, we approach the problem through contextual multi-armed bandits and Reinforcement Learning methods like Q-learning either applied directly to the bandit maximization problem or indirectly to approximate the Gittins indices that are known to yield the optimal provider selection policy. For a simulated scenario corresponding to a practical use case, our agent shows a $20-41\%$ QoE improvement over random provider selection under various demand, price and mobility conditions. We implemented a prototype spectrum market using LTE networks and eSIM techology and deployed it on a testbed, using a blockchain to implement the ledger where bandwidth purchase transactions are recorded. Experiments showed that we can learn both user behavior and network performance efficiently, and recorded $25-74\%$ improvements in QoE under various competing agent scenarios.

Open access
cs.NI
Original source