Seyed Amid Moeinzadeh Mirhosseini, Ali Fanian, T. Aaron Gulliver
The advent of Bitcoin, and consequently Blockchain, has ushered in a new era\nof decentralization. Blockchain enables mutually distrusting entities to work\ncollaboratively to attain a common objective. However, current Blockchain\ntechnologies lack scalability, which limits their use in Internet of Things\n(IoT) applications. Many devices on the Internet have the computational and\ncommunication capabilities to facilitate decision-making. These devices will\nsoon be a 50 billion node network. Furthermore, new IoT business models such as\nSensor-as-a-Service (SaaS) require a robust Trust and Reputation System (TRS).\nIn this paper, we introduce an innovative distributed ledger combining Tangle\nand Blockchain as a TRS framework for IoT. The combination of Tangle and\nBlockchain provides maintainability of the former and scalability of the\nlatter. The proposed ledger can handle large numbers of IoT device transactions\nand facilitates low power nodes joining and contributing. Employing a\ndistributed ledger mitigates many threats, such as whitewashing attacks. Along\nwith combining payments and rating protocols, the proposed approach provides\ncleaner data to the upper layer reputation algorithm.\n
Recently, 6G-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) is gaining attention and addressing various challenges of real time application. The artificial intelligence plays a significant role for big data analytics and presents accurate data analysis in real time. However, designing big data analysis through artificial intelligence faces some issues in terms of security, privacy, training data, and centralized architecture. In this article, blockchain-based IoT framework with artificial intelligence is proposed which presents the integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain for IoT applications. The performance of the proposed architecture is evaluated in terms of qualitative and quantitative measurement. For qualitative measurement, how the integration of blockchain and artificial intelligence addresses various issues are described with the description of AI oriented BC and BC oriented AI. The performance evaluation of proposed AI-BC architecture is evaluated and compared with existing techniques in qualitative measurement. The experimental analysis shows that the proposed framework performs better in comparison with the existing state of art techniques.
Abdullah Lakhan, Mazin Abed Mohammed, Dheyaa Ahmed Ibrahim, Karrar Hameed Abdulkareem
Due to emerging developments in sports games, the usage of bio-ankle sensors has been growing progressively. Whereas, Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is an emerging network that boosts bio-inspired sensors’ performances onto the fog-cloud network. However, a sequence of processes is required to complete the healthcare process for one sportsman. Therefore, workflow-enabled bio-inspired sensors tasks scheduled in IoMT postures different challenges. For instance, cost-efficient scheduling, security, and data validation in distributed hospitals to share their data. In this paper, we devise bio-inspired robotics-enabled schemes in the blockchain-fog-cloud-assisted IoMT environment. The goal is to minimize execution cost and blockchain of applications. Based on the proposed system, the study devises bio-inspired robotics function blockchain task scheduling (BIR-FBTS) schemes, determining the optimal assignment of tasks to the available nodes. The simulation results show that the proposed methods minimized 50% of the service cost and 40% of mined cost in the system compared to all existing bio-inspired healthcare systems.
With the popularity of the internet 5G network, the network constructions of hospitals have also rapidly developed. Operations management in the healthcare system is becoming paperless, for example, via a shared electronic medical record (EMR) system. A shared electronic medical record system plays an important role in reducing diagnosis costs and improving diagnostic accuracy. In the traditional electronic medical record system, centralized database storage is typically used. Once there is a problem with the data storage, it could cause data privacy disclosure and security risks. Blockchain is tamper-proof and data traceable. It can ensure the security and correctness of data. Proxy re-encryption technology can ensure the safe sharing and transmission of relatively sensitive data. Based on the above situation, we propose an electronic medical record system based on consortium blockchain and proxy re-encryption to solve the problem of EMR security sharing. Electronic equipment in this process is connected to the blockchain network, and the security of data access is ensured through the automatic execution of blockchain chaincodes; the attribute-based access control method ensures fine-grained access to the data and improves the system security. Compared with the existing electronic medical records based on cloud storage, the system not only realizes the sharing of electronic medical records, but it also has advantages in privacy protection, access control, data security, etc.
Célio Márcio Soares Ferreira, Charles Tim Batista Garrocho, Carlos Frederico Marcelo da Cunha Cavalcanti, Jorge Sá Silva · 5 authors
Blockchain is already advancing in journeys beyond cryptocurrency applications, and Ethereum, already called the world's computer, is going on a path that intends to reinvent the internet or Web 3.0, currently the leading platform for deploying so-called distributed applications (DApp). The growth of these Dapps in different spheres of society, as Smart Cities and Industry 4.0 IoT applications demand new proposals and models that integrate Ethereum and its ecosystem data with existing datasets on the traditional Web. This work presents our efforts to apply ontologies representing an Ethereum network and ecosystem using the Semantic Web model to extract and link its data. We show EthExtras a new ontology that extends and simplifies the EthOn, and as proof of concept and sample of use, we design a middleware web that exposed as RDF graphs the Ethereum data in soft real-time.
Yassine Himeur, Aya Sayed, Abdullah Alsalemi, Faycal Bensaali · 9 authors
Recommender systems have been widely used in different application domains including energy-preservation, e-commerce, healthcare, social media, etc. Such applications require the analysis and mining of massive amounts of various types of user data, including demographics, preferences, social interactions, etc. in order to develop accurate and precise recommender systems. Such datasets often include sensitive information, yet most recommender systems are focusing on the models’ accuracy and ignore issues related to security and the users’ privacy. Despite the efforts to overcome these problems using different risk reduction techniques, none of them has been completely successful in ensuring cryptographic security and protection of the users’ private information. To bridge this gap, the blockchain technology is presented as a promising strategy to promote security and privacy preservation in recommender systems, not only because of its security and privacy salient features, but also due to its resilience, adaptability, fault tolerance and trust characteristics. This paper presents a holistic review of blockchain-based recommender systems covering challenges, open issues and solutions. Accordingly, a well-designed taxonomy is introduced to describe the security and privacy challenges, overview existing frameworks and discuss their applications and benefits when using blockchain before indicating opportunities for future research.
Srinath Perera, Amer A. Hijazi, G. Thilini Weerasuriya, Samudaya Nanayakkara · 5 authors
Blockchain can be introduced to use cases in the built environment where reliability of transaction records is paramount. Blockchain facilitates decentralised, cryptographically secure, trustworthy, and immutable recordkeeping of transactions. However, more research is urgently required to understand the process and complications in implementing blockchain solutions in the built environment. This paper demonstrates a methodology for developing a blockchain system starting from problem analysis, selection of blockchain platform, system modelling, prototype development, and evaluation. The evolutionary prototyping model was selected as the software development methodology for the use case of property transactions. A systematic process protocol involving the multi-criteria decision-making method, Simple Multi Attribute Rating Technique (SMART), was used to select Hyperledger Fabric as the most suitable blockchain platform for the prototype. The system architecture facilitates a simplified, lean property transaction process implemented through chaincode (smart contract) algorithms and graphical user interfaces. System evaluation through test cases allowed iterative improvements, leading to an incubation-ready software prototype. The contribution to knowledge of this paper is in the demonstration of the process to follow to implement a blockchain solution for a specific domain. The findings provide the foundation for developing proofs of concept for other potential applications of blockchain in the built environment.
Moin Uddin, Muhammad Muzammal, Muhammad Khurram Hameed, Ibrahim Tariq Javed · 6 authors
Internet of things is widely used in the current era to collect data from sensors and perform specific tasks through processing according to the requirements. The data collected can be sent to a blockchain network to create secure and tamper-resistant records of transactions. The combination of blockchain with IoT has huge potential as it can provide decentralized computation, storage, and exchange for IoT data. However, IoT applications require a low-latency consensus mechanism due to its constraints. In this paper, CBCIoT, a consensus algorithm for blockchain-based IoT applications, is proposed. The primary purpose of this algorithm is to improve scalability in terms of validation and verification rate. The algorithm is developed to be compatible with IoT devices where a slight delay is acceptable. The simulation results show the proposed algorithm’s efficiency in terms of block generation time and transactions per second.
Yage Cheng, Bei Gong, Zhijuan Jia, Yanyan Yang · 6 authors
In this article, we analysed the problems of electronic medical records (EMRs) and found that the EMRs generated by different hospitals for the same patient are mutually independent and duplication and data sharing are difficult among hospitals. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes an efficient and secure cross-domain sharing scheme of EMRs based on edge computing. The program allows the doctor to access the personal history EMRs through the patient’s authorization so that the doctor can understand the patient’s history of illness and, on this basis, generate a new medical record for the patient. Then, the doctor sends the EMRs to the edge server, and the server calculates the ciphertext and adds it to the patient’s personal medical record to complete the case update. Analysis shows that this solution can effectively prevent data tampering and forgery through blockchain and avoid privacy leakage problems in plaintext sharing by using searchable encryption and by relying on edge servers to solve nearby computing tasks and divert the computing capacity of cloud servers to improve efficiency. The security proof shows that the scheme satisfies the complex problem of the BDH assumption. Performance analysis shows that the scheme is feasible and efficient.
Abdullah Ayub Khan, Zaffar Ahmed Shaikh, Asif Ali Laghari, Sami Bourouis · 6 authors
In this paper, we propose a secure blockchain-aware framework for distributed data management and monitoring. Indeed, images-based data are captured through drones and transmitted to the fog nodes. The main objective here is to enable process and schedule, to investigate individual captured entity (records) and to analyze changes in the blockchain storage with a secure hash-encrypted (SH-256) consortium peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The proposed blockchain mechanism is also investigated for analyzing the fog-cloud-based stored information, which is referred to as smart contracts. These contracts are designed and deployed to automate the overall distributed monitoring system. They include the registration of UAVs (drones), the day-to-day dynamic captured drone-based images, and the update transactions in the immutable storage for future investigations. The simulation results show the merit of our framework. Indeed, through extensive experiments, the developed system provides good performances regarding monitoring and management tasks.
R. Lakshmana Kumar, Firoz Khan, Seifedine Kadry, Seungmin Rho
Blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) are separately regarded as highly capable popular technologies. Blockchain is a database used for decentralized transaction purposes. It provides novel directions to store and manage data, whereas IoT relates to the propagation of linked machines by providing information through the Internet. A mixture of Blockchain and the IoT appears hopeful, even though blockchain requires real-time data application, and IoT describes processes to store and manage information overloads safely and proficiently. The technology is significant to the manufacturing business, experiencing a digital revolution by incorporating equipment, developments, and data, leading to the Industrial IoT (IIoT). Such a combination of IIoT and blockchain is termed Blockchain for Industrial Internet of Things (BIIoT). The paper gives a detailed survey on BIIoT and discusses all relevant aspects of this novel concept. Firstly, IoT as a concept has been explored briefly, and relevant threats to IoT has been investigated. Furthermore, the domain of IIoT and the relevant challenges to IIoT is discussed. Additionally, an overview of blockchain technology is presented. Subsequently, a combination of IIoT and blockchain is explored, and the BIIoT structural design proposal is submitted. Finally, issues related to the use of IIoT with blockchain for industrial applications of BIIoT is explored. Thus, all relevant open research directions in Blockchain and IIoT are summarized in this paper. This survey shows that the proposed BIIoT is used to develop a redundant, traceable, and secure complex interconnected IIoT environment. Furthermore, the BIIoT system enables us to communicate with each other without the need for a trusted intermediary in a decentralized, unreliable, peer-to-peer network.
Internet of Things (IoT) applications bring evolved and intelligent services that can help improve users' daily lives. These applications include home automation, health care, and smart agriculture. However, IoT development and adoption face various security and privacy challenges that need to be overcome. As a promising security paradigm, context-aware security enables one to enforce security and privacy mechanisms adaptively. Moreover, with the advancements in edge computing, context-aware security services can dynamically be placed close to a user's location and enable the support of low latency communication and mobility. Therefore, the design of an adaptive and decentralized access control mechanism becomes a necessity. In this paper, we propose a decentralized context-aware authorization management as a service based on the blockchain. The proposed architecture extends the Authentication and Authorization for Constrained Environments (ACE) framework with blockchain technology and context-awareness capabilities. Instead of a classic Open Authorization 2.0 (OAuth) access token, it uses a new contextual access token. The evaluation results show our proposition's effectiveness and advantages in terms of usability, security, low latency, and energy consumption.
As the technical support of the industrial Internet of Things, blockchain technology has been widely used in energy trading, data transactions, and Internet of Vehicles. However, most of the existing energy trading models only address the transaction security and transaction privacy issues that arise in the energy trading process, ignoring the fairness of resource allocation and transaction equity in the trading process. In order to tackle those problems, an energy trading scheme called HO-TRAD is proposed in this paper to improve the efficiency of model trading while ensuring the fairness of energy trading. We propose a new trading strategy in the HO-TRAD energy trading scheme that guarantees fairness in the allocation of trading resources by introducing an entity’s active reputation value. Use smart contracts to achieve transparency and ensure fairness in the transaction process. Based on the identity verification foundation of the consortium chain, the scheme enhances the existing PBFT consensus algorithm and improves the efficiency of model transactions. The experimental simulation indicates that the scheme requires less transaction time and has higher transaction fairness and security.
Shan Wang, Ming Yang, Tingjian Ge, Yan Luo · 5 authors
Chain of custody is needed to document the sequence of custody of sensitive big data. In this paper, we design a blockchain big-data sharing system (BBS) based on Hyperledger Fabric. We denote the data stored outside of a ledger for sharing as "off-state" and "big data" (referring to extremely large data) is in this category. In our off-state sharing protocol, a sender registers a file with BBS for sharing. To acquire the file, an authenticated and authorized receiver has to use transactions and interacts with BBS in four phases, including the file transfer request, encrypted file transfer, key retrieval, and file decryption. The corresponding transactions are recorded in the ledger and serve as chain of custody to document the trail of the data. Compared with related work, BBS can perform the four phases autonomously. It utilizes the permissioned blockchain, i.e. Hyperledger Fabric, for access control and can defeat dishonest receivers. We design and implement a prototype of BBS for big file sharing. Extensive experiments were performed to validate its feasibility and performance.
“Traceability” is an important method often used in modern supply management. The traceability system is a system based on the Internet of Things technology. In this process, users will share resources through cloud service providers, so how to ensure data security is also one of the issues we consider. Blockchain technology is an emerging technology in the field of information technology. Its decentralized nature, distributed storage, and difficult data modification provide us with fair exchange and sharing of data. Feasible solutions: in this article, we have studied the key issues of fair exchange and safe sharing of data based on blockchain and designed a multigroup data sharing scheme based on alliance chain. To solve the various existing traceability systems problem, this paper designs a new traceability system based on blockchain technology and implements a system prototype to verify the feasibility of the system.
Aishah Abdullah ALFRHAN, Tarek Moulahi, Abdulatif Alabdulatif
Over the last few years, there has been a great interest in the Internet of Things (IoT). This is mainly because the IoT interacts directly with people's everyday lives in critical applications, such as in smart homes and healthcare applications. IoT devices typically have a resource-constrained architecture, rendering them vulnerable to cyberattacks. Accordingly, smart devices and stored data need to be secured through lightweight and energy-efficient security solutions, which have been identified as the main challenge facing adoption of IoT systems. To address this problem, a disruptive technology (blockchain) has been foreseen by the industry and research community as being able to deliver secure, fast, reliable, and transparent solutions for IoT systems. Hence, this work investigates the adoption of lightweight blockchain technology, mainly as a method of securing IoT systems. Because hashing plays a major role in creating a robust blockchain structure, we select a number of different hash techniques to be executed on a Raspberry Pi device. In summation, this work provides a numerical study to evaluate the performance of well-known hash functions that can be used for lightweight blockchain-based IoT.
Aleksandr Zavodovski, Lorenzo Corneo, Andreas Johnsson, Nitinder Mohan · 8 authors
Edge computing promises to bring computation close to the end-users to support emergent applications such as virtual reality. However, the computational capacity at the edge of the network is currently limited. To become a pervasive paradigm, edge computing needs highly dispersed decentralized deployments, that, contrary to cloud, cannot benefit from economies of scale. In this situation, crowdsourcing appears attractive - there are plenty of computing devices at the disposal of the general public, and these devices are located exactly where computing power is needed the most - at the edge of the network. Crowdsourcing has been a success maker for scientific computing projects, e.g., [email protected], or distributed ledger systems empowering decentralized finance. However, as of now, there is no crowdsourced system that addresses the needs of edge computing. In this position paper, we aim to identify the causes of this shortcoming, analyze the potential ways to overcome it, and outline future directions.
Nur Arifin Akbar, Amgad Muneer, Narmine ElHakim, Suliman Mohamed Fati
Blockchain technology is a sustainable technology that offers a high level of security for many industrial applications. Blockchain has numerous benefits, such as decentralisation, immutability and tamper-proofing. Blockchain is composed of two processes, namely, mining (the process of adding a new block or transaction to the global public ledger created by the previous block) and validation (the process of validating the new block added). Several consensus protocols have been introduced to validate blockchain transactions, Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS), which are crucial to cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. However, these consensus protocols are vulnerable to double-spending attacks. Amongst these attacks, the 51% attack is the most prominent because it involves forking a blockchain to conduct double spending. Many attempts have been made to solve this issue, and examples include delayed proof-of-work (PoW) and several Byzantine fault tolerance mechanisms. These attempts, however, suffer from delay issues and unsorted block sequences. This study proposes a hybrid algorithm that combines PoS and PoW mechanisms to provide a fair mining reward to the miner/validator by conducting forking to combine PoW and PoS consensuses. As demonstrated by the experimental results, the proposed algorithm can reduce the possibility of intruders performing double mining because it requires achieving 100% dominance in the network, which is impossible.
Taras Maksymyuk, Marcel Vološin, Juraj Gazda, Madhusanka Liyanage
The paper presents a novel vision on the application of blockchain technology to empower the dynamic service provisioning in future 6G mobile networks. We propose a platform for decentralized service level agreement (SLA) negotiation between users and mobile network operators (MNOs) based on smart contracts and cryptocurrencies. In addition, the new quality of experience (QoE) model is proposed for end-users to customize their trade-off between SLA and service price. Finally, we develop the method of dynamic service selection among multiple MNOs that provides border-less connectivity for end-users with the guaranteed QoE regardless of the serving MNO.
Blockchain is used as encryption algorithm in cryptocurrency, but less researches are found to study blockchain for data encryption. Data encryption is needed to protect the data from data theft. We know about data encryption, there are RSA, LEAP, AES, and other algorithms. This research proposed a review in AES algorithm for data encryption within blockchain technology. The research process is followed by determining library, then creating relevant questions and criteria. For good opportunity in the future, this paper generated suggestions and opportunities so that better research can be established in data encryption.
A healthcare information system allows patients and other users to remotely login to medical services to access health data through the Internet. To protect the privacy of patients and security over the public network, secure communication is required. Therefore, the security of data in transmission has been attracting increasing attention. In recent years, blockchain technology has also attracted more attention. Relevant research has been published at a high rate. Most methods of satisfying relevant security-related regulations use modular and exponential calculation. This study proposes a medical care information preservation mechanism that considers the entire process of data storage in devices from wearable devices to mobile devices to medical center servers. The entire process is protected and complies with HIPAA privacy and security regulations. The proposed scheme uses extended chaotic map technology to develop ID-based key negotiation for wearable devices, and thereby reduces the amount of computing that must be carried out by wearable devices and achieve lightness quantify. It also uses the non-tamperability of the blockchain to ensure that the data have not been tampered with, improving data security. The proposed mechanism can resist a variety of attacks and is computationally lighter than the elliptic curve point multiplication that has been used elsewhere, while retaining its security characteristics.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Nowadays, the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technology worldwide is accelerating the digital transformation of healthcare industry. In this context, smart healthcare (s-healthcare) solutions are ensuring better and innovative opportunities for healthcare providers to improve patients' care. However, these solutions raise also new challenges in terms of security and privacy due to the diversity of stakeholders, the centralized data management, and the resulting lack of trustworthiness, accountability, and control. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end Blockchain-based and privacy-preserving framework called SmartMedChain for data sharing in s-healthcare environment. The Blockchain is built on Hyperledger Fabric and stores encrypted health data by using the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a distributed data storage solution with high resiliency and scalability. Indeed, compared to other propositions and based on the concept of smart contracts, our solution combines both data access control and data usage auditing measures for both Medical IoT data and Electronic Health Records (EHRs) generated by s-healthcare services. In addition, s-healthcare stakeholders can be held accountable by introducing an innovative Privacy Agreement Management scheme that monitors the execution of the service in respect of patient preferences and in accordance with relevant privacy laws. Security analysis and experimental results show that the proposed SmartMedChain is feasible and efficient for s-healthcare environments.