Abstract With the advancement of technology and economy, the scale of the smart home industry has exploded. While improving people’s lives, smart home systems are facing threats to privacy leaks, malicious attacks, and structural security. Effective security mechanisms are very important for protecting valuable data in smart home systems. Access control helps information systems prevent malicious access, thereby reducing the risk of privacy leakage. Blockchain can provide security support for the Internet of Things system due to its advantages of decentralization and immutability. Therefore, in this paper, a smart home access control scheme based on blockchain is proposed. The scheme uses Hyperledger Fabric and implements access control strategies through smart contracts. By designing a hybrid access control model based on dynamic attribute-based access control and static access control matrix, the remote access control initiated by the user through the Internet and the access control between local devices are well guaranteed at the same time. Through safety analysis and performance evaluation, the feasibility of the proposed scheme is demonstrated.
Tim Weingärtner, Danielle Alves Batista, Sandro Köchli, Gilles Voutat
Corruption in public procurement is a worldwide appearance that causes immense financial and reputational damages. Especially in developing countries, corruption is a widespread issue due to secrecy and lack of transparency. An important instrument for transparency and accountability assurance is the record which is managed and controlled by recordkeeping systems. Blockchain technology and more precisely blockchain-based smart contracts are emerging technological tools that can be used as recordkeeping systems and a tool to mitigate some of the fraud involving public procurement records. Immutability, transparency, distribution and automation are some of the features of smart contracts already implemented in several applications to avoid malicious human interference. In this paper, we discuss some of the frauds in public procurement, and we propose smart contracts to automatize different stages of the public procurement procedure attempting to fix their biggest current weaknesses. The processes we have focused on include the bidding process, supplier habilitation and delivery verification. In the three subprocesses, common irregularities include human fallibility, improper information disclosure and hidden agreements which concern not only governments but also civil society. To show the feasibility and usability of our proposal, we have implemented a prototype that demonstrates the process using sample data.
Hansrenee Willysandro, Johan Setiawan, Agus Sulaiman
Data is an important thing as a base of an analytic or a hypothesis for concluding participant vote data in the Indonesian General Election. The data needs to be processed and secured, so the integrity of the data is in good condition. It also needs to protect the participant voting rights, so the information is correctly displayed. The research problems include creating a system that protects the integrity of election data and creating a system that protects election rights for each voter. Based on the problems, this research discusses a blockchain-based electronic voting information system that would secure the integrity of data and also protecting the participant voting rights in a General Election. The system uses Ethereum as a blockchain with Solidity as a programming language to build a smart contract and is built in Microsoft Windows platform. In this research, consortium blockchain and biometric fingerprint authentication are used as a problem-solving method, and waterfall steps is used as a system development method. The result of this research is a proposed design of the e-voting system. The conclusion based on this research is a blockchain-based e-voting system that secures the integrity of the data in a selection process and ensures protection to each vote right. Index Terms”Authentication; Blockchain; Data; Integrity; E-Voting; System
Piotr Pośpiech, Aleksander Mariański, Michał Kędziora
The paper presents decentralized voting scheme for verified users while maintaining their anonymity. A blockchain network was applied, which is a decentralized and distributed database based on the Peer-to-Peer architecture. During the implementation, the Ethereum network was used. Thanks to this, it is possible to code the terms of the contract required to perform the transaction. Ethereum and the use of smart contracts were also discussed in paper. The implementation uses the blind signature protocol by David Chaum and encryption with the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) algorithm. Presented in this paper scheme for blockchain decentralized voting for verified users with focus on anonymity is then fully implemented and identified potential issues are analysed and discussed.
Mohammad Malkawi, Muneer Bani Yassein, Asmaa Bataineh
Covid-19 pandemic has stressed more than any-time before the necessity for conducting election processes in an electronic manner, where voters can cast their votes remotely with complete security, privacy, and trust. The different voting schema in different countries makes it very difficult to utilize a one fits all system. This paper presents a blockchain based voting system (BBVS) applied to the Parliamentary elections system in the country of Jordan. The proposed system is a private and centralized blockchain implemented in a simulated environment. The proposed BBVS system implements a hierarchical voting process, where a voter casts votes at two levels, one for a group, and the second for distinct members within the group. This paper provides a novel blockchain based e-Voting system, which proves to be transparent and yet secure. This paper utilizes synthetic voter benchmarks to measure the performance, accuracy and integrity of the election process. This research introduced and implemented new algorithms and methods to maintain acceptable performance both at the time of creating the blockchain(s) for voters and candidates as well as at the time of casting votes by voters.
The emergence of blockchain technology has paved the way for innovative solutions in various domains, particularly in enhancing democratic processes. This research paper presents the design, development, and evaluation of a Web3 blockchain decentralized voting application (DAPP) built using React JS for frontend development and Solidity for smart contract implementation. The objective of this study is to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of employing blockchain technology to create a secure, transparent, and decentralized voting system. The proposed DAPP leverages the immutability and transparency features of blockchain technology to ensure the integrity of the voting process. Smart contracts coded in Solidity are utilized to execute the voting mechanism, ensuring tamper-proof recording and tallying of votes. React JS, a popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces, is employed to develop an intuitive and user-friendly frontend interface, enhancing accessibility and usability for voters. Key aspects addressed in this research include the architecture of the DAPP, the design of smart contracts for voting logic, integration of React JS components for frontend development, and security considerations to prevent vulnerabilities and attacks. Additionally, the paper discusses the implications of decentralized voting systems on democracy, including increased trust, transparency, and participation.
Open access
3 source records
Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
This paper presents iBatch, a middleware system running on top of an operational Ethereum network to enable secure batching of smart-contract invocations against an untrusted relay server off-chain. iBatch does so at a low overhead by validating the server's batched invocations in smart contracts without additional states. The iBatch mechanism supports a variety of policies, ranging from conservative to aggressive batching, and can be configured adaptively to the current workloads. iBatch automatically rewrites smart contracts to integrate with legacy applications and support large-scale deployment. For cost evaluation, we develop a platform with fast and cost-accurate transaction replaying, build real transaction benchmarks on popular Ethereum applications, and build a functional prototype of iBatch on Ethereum. The evaluation results show that iBatch saves 14.6%-59.1% Gas cost per invocation with a moderate 2-minute delay and 19.06%-31.52% Ether cost per invocation with a delay of 0.26-1.66 blocks.
We considered scalable anonymous voting on the Ethereum blockchain. We identified three major bottlenecks in implementation: (1) division overflow in encryption of voting values for anonymity; (2) large time complexity in tallying, which limited scalability in the number of candidates and voters; and (3) tallying failure due to "no votes" from registered voters. Previous schemes failed at tallying if one (or more) registered voters did not send encrypted voting values. Algorithmic solutions and implementation details are provided. An experiment using Truffle and Remix running on a desktop PC was performed for evaluation. Our scheme shows great reduction in gas, which measures the computational burden of smart contracts to be executed on Ethereum. For instance, our scheme consumed 1/53 of the gas compared to a state-of-the-art solution for 60 voters. Time complexity analysis shows that our scheme is asymptotically superior to known solutions. In addition, we propose a solution to the tallying failure due to the "no vote" from registered voters.
Abstract Voting refers to the submission of an election or an opinion on a specific matter by expressing an intention on the ballot to a certain place. The existing voting method has the burden of counting time and cost. For this reason, research has been conducted to introduce an e-voting system. However, despite the advantages of e-voting, it is not widely used due to the risk of manipulation of voting results and various requirements. Recently, in order to reduce the risk of data manipulation, research is being conducted to apply the blockchain, a technology that guarantees data integrity, to e-voting. Blockchain guarantees the integrity of data, but has a weakness in secrecy. This paper applies the critical encryption technique to the blockchain and satisfies the requirements for voting such as verifiability, anonymity, fairness, non-reusability, competence, safety, transparency, and non-ticketing. We propose a system design and implementation method. The proposed blockchain-based e-voting system provides voter anonymity by issuing a voter certificate based on a blockchain address. The e-voting election monitoring committee generates a threshold group encryption key, and the proposed blockchain-based e-voting system guarantees confidentiality by a threshold group encryption algorithm during the voting process. The voting result is encrypted through a homomorphic encryption algorithm and stored in the blockchain. Thus, the released voting results ensure safety, confidentiality, transparency, and non-vote ticketing. In addition, the proposed blockchain-based e-voting system guarantees the unity and competence of voting through the blockchain’s smart contract.
We propose an ideal functionalityFCDand a construction ΠCDfor oblivious and updatable committed databases.FCDallows a proverPto read, write, and update values in a database and to prove to a verifierVin zero-knowledge (ZK) that a value is read from or written into a certain position. The following properties must hold: (1) values stored in the database remain hidden fromV; (2) a value read from a certain position is equal to the value previously written into that position; (3) (obliviousness) both the value read or written and its position remain hidden fromV.ΠCDis based on vector commitments. After the initialization phase, the cost of read and write operations is independent of the database size, outperforming other techniques that achieve cost sublinear in the dataset size for prover and/or verifier. Therefore, our construction is especially appealing for large datasets. In existing “commit-and-prove” two-party protocols, the task of maintaining a committed database betweenPandVand reading and writing values into it is not separated from the task of proving statements about the values read or written.FCDallows us to improve modularity in protocol design by separating those tasks. In comparison to simply using a commitment scheme to maintain a committed database,FCDallowsPto hide efficiently the positions read or written fromV. Thanks to this property, we design protocols for e.g. privacy-preserving e-commerce and location-based services whereVgathers aggregate statistics about the statements thatPproves in ZK.
One of the most important discoveries and creative developments that is playing a vital role in the professional world today is blockchain technology. A blockchain is a distributed, digitized and consensus-based secure information storage mechanism. Blockchain technology moves in the direction of persistent revolution and change. In the last couple of years, the upsurge in blockchain technology has obliged scholars and specialists to scrutinize new ways to apply blockchain technology with a wide range of domains. The dramatic increase in blockchain technology has provided many new application opportunities, including e-voting application. The present article provides a systematic review of emerging blockchain-based e-voting systems. In this paper, we call attention to the open research matters in this fast-growing field, explaining them in some details. It was concluded that frameworks needed enhancements in order to be used in voting systems due to these reservations. KEYWORDS: blockchain, e-voting, cloud computing, ethereum; ballot
Xavier Boyen, Udyani Herath, Matthew McKague, Douglas Stebila
The conventional public key infrastructure (PKI) model, which powers most of the Internet, suffers from an excess of trust into certificate authorities (CAs), compounded by a lack of transparency which makes it vulnerable to hard-to-detect targeted stealth impersonation attacks. Existing approaches to make certificate issuance more transparent, including ones based on blockchains, are still somewhat centralized. We present decentralized PKI transparency (DPKIT): a decentralized client-based approach to enforcing transparency in certificate issuance and revocation while eliminating single points of failure. DPKIT efficiently leverages an existing blockchain to realize an append-only, distributed associative array, which allows anyone (or their browser) to audit and update the history of all publicly issued certificates and revocations for any domain. Our technical contributions include definitions for append-only associative ledgers, a security model for certificate transparency, and a formal analysis of our DPKIT construction with respect to the same. Intended as a client-side browser extension, DPKIT will be effective at fraud detection and prosecution, even under fledgling user adoption, and with better coverage and privacy than federated observatories, such as Google’s or the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s.
Smart contract is the building block of blockchain systems that enables automated peer-to-peer transactions and decentralized services. With the increasing popularity of smart contracts, blockchain systems, in particular Ethereum, have been the "paradise" of versatile fraud activities in which Ponzi, Honeypot and Phishing are the prominent ones. Formal verification and symbolic analysis have been employed to combat these destructive scams by analyzing the codes and function calls, yet the vulnerability of each \emph{individual} scam should be predefined discreetly. In this work, we present SCSGuard, a novel deep learning scam detection framework that harnesses the automatically extractable bytecodes of smart contracts as their new features. We design a GRU network with attention mechanism to learn from the \emph{N-gram bytecode} patterns, and determines whether a smart contract is fraudulent or not. Our framework is advantageous over the baseline algorithms in three aspects. Firstly, SCSGuard provides a unified solution to different scam genres, thus relieving the need of code analysis skills. Secondly, the inference of SCSGuard is faster than the code analysis by several order of magnitudes. Thirdly, experimental results manifest that SCSGuard achieves high accuracy (0.92$\sim$0.94), precision (0.94$\sim$0.96\%) and recall (0.97$\sim$0.98) for both Ponzi and Honeypot scams under similar settings, and is potentially useful to detect new Phishing smart contracts.
With the massive use of dematerialized storage, homomorphism has become one of the most widely used properties in cryptology. In this thesis we will study how to use it in concrete multi-users protocols requiring not only confidentiality but also anonymity, authentication or verifiability. Homomorphic encryption schemes, homomorphic digital signatures and homomorphic zero-knowledge proofs will be used together, but each time restricted to achieve the desired level of security.First, the confidential aspect is studied for computations on large outsourced databases. Being able to apply functions on encrypted data without having to download and decrypt it entirely may be essential and allows to take advantage of the computational power of the server. This can also be interesting when a third-party company without right-access to the database wants to obtain the result of a computation. However, some guarantees on the learned information need to be taken. To this end, we present a decentralized encryption scheme that allows controlled evaluation of quadratic functions on outsourced data thanks to a group of controllers.However, sometimes confidentiality of the data is not the most desired property for a system as it does not protect the sender. For electronic voting, each encrypted ballot must be associated with its voter to verify that he is allowed to vote. After the voting phase, anonymity is achieved by shuffling so that, during the count, which corresponds to the decryption, no link between votes and voters can be made. We propose a new construction of mix-network based on linearly homomorphic signatures which allows for the first time a verification which is cost-independent of the number of mix-servers. This scalable mix-net improves the efficiency compared to already known constructions, especially with an increasing number of shuffles.Nevertheless, with perfect anonymity comes the threat of malicious use of the system. Cryptology must consider these possible abuses and we propose the first multi-authority anonymous credential protocol with traceability property: a user asks a credential issuer for a credential and uses it to access a system while remaining anonymous. In case of abuse, an authority can revoke anonymity and trace a malicious user. The scheme is as efficient as the previously known credential schemes while achieving the multi-credential issuer functionality.
Bitcoin has emerged in 2008, and after decades of development, it has become the largest trading currency by far. The core of the blockchain is to ensure the anonymity of user transactions. As more and more analysis algorithms for blockchain transactions appear, the anonymity of the blockchain is increasingly threatened. We propose Tomen, an encryption application for the communication process in the bitcoin transaction process, combined with the encryption principle method of Tor. The goal is to achieve the application of the anonymization of bitcoin transaction communication.
Open access
2 source records
cs.CR
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the inter-domain routing protocol that glues the Internet. BGP does not incorporate security and instead, it relies on careful configuration and manual filtering to offer some protection. As a consequence, the current inter-domain routing infrastructure is partially vulnerable to prefix and path hijacks as well as in misconfigurations that results in route leaks. There are many instances of these vulnerabilities being exploited by malicious actors on the Internet, resulting in disruption of services. To address this issue the IETF has designed RPKI, a centralised trust architecture that relies on Public Key Infrastructure. RPKI has slow adoption and its centralised nature is problematic: network administrators are required to trust CAs and do not have the ultimate control of their own critical Internet resources (e.g,. IP blocks, AS Numbers). In this context, we have built the Decentralised Internet Infrastructure (DII), a distributed ledger to securely store inter-domain routing information. The main advantages of DII are (i) it offers flexible trust models where the Internet community can define the rules of a consensus algorithm that properly reflects the power balance of its members and, (ii) offers protection against vulnerabilities (path hijack and route leaks) that goes well beyond what RPKI offers. We have deployed the prototype on the wild in a worldwide testbed including 7 ASes, we will use the testbed to demonstrate in a realistic scenario how allocation and delegation of Internet resources in DII work, and how this protects ASes against artificially produced path and prefix hijack as well as a route leak.
In Internet of Things (IoT) environments, privacy and security are among some of the significant challenges. Recently, several studies have attempted to apply blockchain technology to increase IoT network security. However, the lightweight feature of IoT devices commonly fails to meet computational intensive requirements for blockchain-based security models. In this work, we propose a mechanism to address this issue. We design an IoT blockchain architecture to store device identity information in a distributed ledger. We propose a Blockchain of Things (BCoT) Gateway to facilitate the recording of authentication transactions in a blockchain network without modifying existing device hardware or applications. Furthermore, we introduce a new device recognition model that is suitable for blockchain-based identity authentication, where we employ a novel feature selection method for device traffic flow. Finally, we develop the BCoT Sentry framework as a reference implementation of our proposed method. Experiment results verify the feasibility of our proposed framework.
Blockchain technology (BT) Ethereum Smart Contracts allows programmable\ntransactions that involve the transfer of monetary assets among peers on a BT\nnetwork independent of a central authorizing agency. Ethereum Smart Contracts\nare programs that are deployed as decentralized applications, having the\nbuilding blocks of the blockchain consensus protocol. This technology enables\nconsumers to make agreements in a transparent and conflict-free environment.\nHowever, the security vulnerabilities within these smart contracts are a\npotential threat to the applications and their consumers and have shown in the\npast to cause huge financial losses. In this paper, we propose a framework that\ncombines static and dynamic analysis to detect Denial of Service (DoS)\nvulnerability due to an unexpected revert in Ethereum Smart Contracts. Our\nframework, SmartScan, statically scans smart contracts under test (SCUTs) to\nidentify patterns that are potentially vulnerable in these SCUTs and then uses\ndynamic analysis to precisely confirm their exploitability of the\nDoS-Unexpected Revert vulnerability, thus achieving increased performance and\nmore precise results. We evaluated SmartScan on a set of 500 smart contracts\ncollected from the Etherscan. Our approach shows an improvement in precision\nand recall when compared to available state-of-the-art techniques.\n
In this study, we overview the problems associated with the usability of cryptocurrency wallets, such as those used by ZCash, for end-users. The concept of "holistic privacy," where information leaks in one part of a system can violate the privacy expectations of different parts of the system, is introduced as a requirement. To test this requirement with real-world software, we did a 60 person task-based evaluation of the usability of a ZCash cryptocurrency wallet by having users install and try to both send and receive anonymized ZCash transactions, as well as install a VPN and Tor. While the initial wallet installation was difficult, we found even a larger amount of difficulty integrating the ZCash wallet into network-level protection like VPNs or Tor, so only a quarter of users could complete a real-world purchase using the wallet.
Christian Killer, Markus Knecht, Claude Müller, Bruno Rodrigues · 7 authors
Remote Electronic Voting (REV) systems allow voters to cast their votes in an uncontrolled, distributed environment. At the same time, the REV system must provide ballot privacy and verifiability of the final tally. Research has proposed REV schemes offering ballot privacy based on computational intractability assumptions, but only a few provide Unconditional Privacy (UP). Therefore, this work proposes Æternum, a REV system with a voting scheme providing UP. Æternum does not require trust in a central authority, nor does it assume computational intractability of an underlying mathematical problem to provide UP. To satisfy UP's minimal trust assumptions, Æternum uses a permissioned Distributed Ledger (DL), that forms a decentralized network of permissioned nodes, which serve as a transparent, tamper-proof Decentralized Public Bulletin Board (DPBB).
N. Suganthi, Gokul Sridharan, E Shravanth, K. Veena
Abstract: Democratic rule is based on safe and open electoral systems that can preserve their authenticity. The conventional voting processes are hampered significantly by electoral fraud and security breaches as well as centralized management and inefficiencies in auditability and accessibility. The issues of electoral systems reduce public trust along with lowering the credibility of election results. This paper introduces a new three-tier blockchain-based e-voting system designed to enhance voter privacy alongside system scalability and end-to-end verifiability to restore trust in electoral processes. Voter verification at Layer 1 (Identity Verification) combines Decentralized Identity (DID) with Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and multimodal biometric techniques involving fingerprint scanning, facial recognition technology, and voice analysis. The system enables only the participation of valid voters while also protecting their private data and fulfilling different user needs. The system's Layer 2 (Vote Casting & Secure Storage) employs a hybrid consensus algorithm combining Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) and Delegated Proof-of-Stake (dPoS) to store votes securely while reducing energy consumption. The system leverages Triple-Blind Signatures to provide complete voter anonymity by decoupling voter identities from their votes as well as any accompanying metadata. Lattice-based post-quantum cryptography is employed to encrypt votes which are distributed across sharded blockchain subnets for enhanced performance without sacrificing fault tolerance. The system accumulates votes via Merkle roots and verifies them via zk-SNARKs in Layer 3 (Result Processing & Transparency) that allows public observation without compromising voter privacy. A Live Audit Dashboard provides voters with the capability to check their vote in real time which facilitates transparent and accountable voting processes. The suggested system attains a secure and open electronic voting process using sophisticated cryptographic protocols in a decentralized setup compliant with international requirements while enabling digital democratic participation.
Security and trust are seen as the most important issues in electronic voting systems. Therefore, it is necessary to use cryptographic procedures to ensure anonymity, security, privacy, and reliability in these systems. In recent years, blockchain has become one of the most commonly used methods for securing data storage and transmission through decentralized applications. E-voting is one of these application areas. However, data manipulation is still seen as a major potential problem in e-voting systems. In theproposed model, administrators or miners are prevented from previewing election results which are normally accessible data due to the blockchain structure. A double-layer encryption model is proposed and tested to prevent manipulations that may occur with the election results. It is ensured that the election results can be counted after the participation of all stakeholders at the end. In this way, potential manipulations may be prevented during the election period. As a result of the model, the privacy of voters is ensured, no central authority is needed, and the recorded votes are kept in a distributed structure.
The advancement of internet technology, cybersecurity, and the distributed system has enabled the development and establishment of electronic voting systems. This study focuses on the design and architecture of a secure and auditable electronic voting system that consists of a website, database system, and blockchain. The Ethereum blockchain is chosen due to its smart contract that is suitable for applications such as e-voting. The implementation is done using the Go language, and the Ethereum blockchain is accessible through the e-voting website. Initial testing and evaluation results show that the proposed design and architecture of the e-voting system allows a secure transaction to take place and auditable at the same time. Several configurations on the blockchain, such as block size, gas limit, and the number of sealers, could be modified to boost the performances further.