Operators of networks are striving to provide functional network-based services, while keeping the cost of deploying the service to a minimum. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is considered to be a promising model to modify such employment by separating network functions from the basic hardware properties, after which they are converted into the style of software. These are eventually referred to as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). This separation offers numerous benefits, including the decrease of Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operation Expense (OPEX), in addition to the enhanced elasticity of service preparation. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is found to cause a remarkable development or even a technological revolution in terms of network-based services, leading to a decrease in deployment costs for network operators. NFV reduces hardware tool costs and energy exhaustion, and it improves its operational performance whereby the network configuration is part of this optimization. Even so, there are a number of possible security problems which are the main focus in NFV. The present study surveys the applications and opportunities of NFV in terms of IoT, SDN, cloud computing and blockchain. A description of the NFV architecture is presented, and several possibilities of NFV security issues and challenges are discussed. Finally, a systematic idea is provided on the design of a Blockchain Network Virtualization System.
Poonam N. Railkar, Parikshit N. Mahalle, Gitanjali R. Shinde
IoT is a network of interconnected heterogeneous devices which sense, accumulate the data and forward the same to the cloud platform for analytical purposes. There are various IoT verticals in which huge research is going on. IoT security is the most challenging research area in which researchers are investing a huge number of efforts. The challenges in IoT security include access control, trust management, authentication, authorization, privacy, and secured device to device communication. To overcome these, this paper gives an overview of proposed trust based distributed access control approach in IoT. Some of the challenges and threats can be controlled by blockchain technology. Basically, blockchain is an open and distributed ledger of records that can be verified efficiently and stored permanently. This paper checks the feasibility study of the applicability of blockchain in the IoT ecosystem to apply access control mechanism and privacy-preserving policies. This paper discusses how access control and privacy can be addressed by blockchain without compromising security. This paper consists of rigorous gap analysis which is done on the top of comprehensive literature survey. The paper also addresses the challenges and issues which can be faced while applying access control mechanism using blockchain in the context of IoT.
Baraa I. Farhan, Rawaa Ismael Farhan, Ghaith A. Hussein
With the adoption of assorted gadgets and technology loaded devices, there is need to work on security and privacy while using such platforms. Now, the focus of concern has turned to the overwhelming secrecy, the high performance security, and integrity of the transactions in the cyber space. In relation to a chain of records which is interlinked and highly encrypted due to the involving hashing and encryption each process, it is known as a blockchain. The blockchain removes the possibility of a fraudulent or accidental tampering with the framework. Blockchain has the ability to store sensor data, as well as the capacity to thwart data falsification. IoT deployment plans are usually complex, and the distributed ledger is particularly well-suited for Internet of Things (IoT) discovery, authentication, and recording of information. Wireless body networks are set to be published here on the use trends of Blockchain deployment using advanced scripting and embedded technology the included incorporation of effectual effects gives the final results as well as opposed to the conventional cryptography approach to security.
Firdous Kausar, Fahad M. Senan, Hafiz M. Asif, Kaamran Raahemifar
Blockchain technology is now being used in every aspect of human life. It appears like everyone is racing to develop apps that run on top of the blockchain technology available today. Indeed, this is owing to the fact that it has distinct qualities and a distinctive design. However, it is not well suited to all applications of blockchain technology. Not merely altering the blockchain protocols would make it suitable, but instead redesigning its architecture is required to make it ideal for different applications. This paper describes the overview of blockchain technology thoroughly. It provides a detailed discussion on the prevalent core-oriented and client-oriented attacks on blockchain technology and the vulnerabilities exploited by them. It also presents the possible countermeasure to these attacks. Moreover, it provides insight into the creation of a better version of the blockchain that is more suitable for different types of blockchain applications.
Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in the blockchain technology, and many blockchain-based applications have been developed to take advantage of its decentralization, transparency, fault tolerance, and strong security. In the field of smart grids, a plethora of proposals have emerged to utilize blockchain for augmenting intelligent energy management, energy trading, security and privacy protection, microgrid management, and energy vehicles. Compared with traditional centralized approaches, blockchain-based solutions are able to exploit the advantages of blockchain to realize better functionality in smart grids. However, the blockchain technology itself has its disadvantages in low processing throughput and weak privacy protection. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to study how to integrate blockchain with smart grids in a more effective way so that the advantages of blockchain can be maximized and its disadvantages can be avoided. This article surveys the state-of-the-art solutions aiming to integrate the emergent blockchain technology with smart grids. The goal of this survey is to discuss the necessity of applying blockchain in different components of smart grids, identify the challenges encountered by current solutions, and highlight the frameworks and techniques used to integrate blockchain with smart grids. We also present thorough comparison studies among blockchain-based solutions for smart grids from different perspectives, with the aim to provide insights on integrating blockchain with smart grids for different smart grid management tasks. Finally, we list the current projects and initiatives demonstrating the current effort from the practice side. Additionally, we draw attention to open problems that have not yet been tackled by existing solutions, and point out possible future research directions.
present, we are in the world of digital revolution. Use of smartphones and internet accelerated due to the impact of the novel Covid-19 virus. The whole world started to turn digital. The industrialization of Internet of Things (IoT) enables more devices to connect and communicate which leads to many data transfer transactions. The architecture of IoT is centralized. The distributed and decentralized architecture of Blockchain can be used to provide secure and scalable transactions of IoT devices. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology, which provides secure data transactions that cannot be tampered and altered. In this paper, we provide advantages and challenges of integrating IoT and Blockchain. We also provide different architectures and algorithms proposed by researchers to provide secure data transactions. We shall also shed light on the future research directions of integrating Blockchain and IoT.
Paulo Valente Klaine, Lei Zhang, Muhammad Ali Imran
Nowadays data is one of the most important assets that can be obtained, as many applications rely on data to generate useful services. However, a very few number of companies control, in a centralized manner, a large portion of data. That, combined with inefficiencies in centralized storage and recent data leak scandals, highlights the need for new ways in which data is shared and consumed, in which privacy and access control is guaranteed by design. Based on that, in this paper we present an implementation of a blockchain-based data marketplace utilizing the Go Ethereum (Geth) library. The implementation consists of an IoT node powered by a raspberry pi zero W, which is utilized to collect data from the environment and store it in an InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) external server, a web page that displays the marketplace, and a private blockchain that records transactions. Regarding the private blockchain, three smart contracts are developed in order to: 1) record information about the data in the marketplace; 2) record transactions that occur between users; 3) allow sellers to white/blacklist buyers' access to the data. This implementation shows that a decentralized blockchain-based marketplace is feasible and scalable, and we hope it can serve as an early model for future frameworks.
Blockchain technology has garnered attention from stakeholders in many domains, including healthcare, governance and supply chain management. In the context of healthcare, traceability of pharmaceutical drugs in a transparent yet secure manner can be made faster and efficient with blockchain. This paper presents a blockchain based solution for traceability known as PharmaChain. The traceability is achieved with application design and algorithms which are proposed in the work. The proposed application can be developed using hyperledger fabric deployed on dockers. The chain codes are written in javascript. The pharmaceutical blockchain proposed in this work consists of manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer and consumer. The right for registering a drug into the blockchain is granted to the manufacturers only and the ownership transfer of the drug is stored. This paper highlights the traceability of ownership transfer of the drug and validates its origin.
After successful completion of graduation, students receive the credits of the courses in the form of certificate issued by the respective University. A Student have to produce his/her documents to the employers or the authorities for employment or higher education. Today ,as the system is centralized all the data resides on the server which can be hacked or the data can be lost if the system crushes down. However, verifying a certificate by authorities, is a time-consuming process as there is an involvement of human resources ,for validating the details of the candidate from its University. Today , with the advancement in technologies and due to the easy availability of many efficient soft wares that have led to the forgery of credentials/certificates. The lack of anti-tampering mechanisms resulted in incidents where the forged graduation certificates are often found. Also ,in case certificates are out of place , applying for duplicate certificates and its issuance by the University consumes a lot of time. Use of blockchain technology in this process will make the system decentralized as blocks as cryptographically connected and all the nodes in the network shares the entire chain .Hence the proposed decentralized certificate verification system, uses blockchain technology incorporating all the essential features in developing a DAPP. This system is proposed to address the issue of certificate counterfeiting, faster certificate verification and issuance. Putting across all the issues, the system aims at addressing the problems and provide solutions to the current Certificate Issuance, verification and Validation Process.
Azza Abdullah Alnssayan, Mohammad Mahdi Hassan, Suliman A. Alsuhibany
The digitalization of healthcare-related information service systems has become a trend across the world. However, several crucial services are still provided manually due to a lack of trust in digital solutions. One such service is keeping records of children’s vaccination, which still relies on a paper-based file system in most parts of the world. This approach causes serious data integrity problems. Recently, healthcare has become a potential application area of the blockchain, as it can preserve and protect highly sensitive private medical records while sharing these records in a decentralized manner without losing personal ownership. Therefore, we propose a new digital model to track a child’s vaccination records using blockchain. In particular, this proposed application helps improve the vaccination record-keeping process by ensuring the integrity of the preserved data in a more secure way. In an emerging pandemic situation, our approach can be extended to manage the overall vaccination process effectively.
The rapid advancement in artificial intelligence (AI) and wide deployment of Internet of Video Things (IoVT) enable situation awareness (SAW). The robustness and security of IoVT systems are essential for a sustainable urban environment. While blockchain technology has shown great potential in enabling trust-free and decentralized security mechanisms, directly embedding cryptocurrency oriented blockchain schemes into resource-constrained Internet of Video Things (IoVT) networks at the edge is not feasible. By leveraging Electrical Network Frequency (ENF) signals extracted from multimedia recordings as region-of-recording proofs, this paper proposes EconLedger, an ENF-based consensus mechanism that enables secure and lightweight distributed ledgers for small-scale IoVT edge networks. The proposed consensus mechanism relies on a novel Proof-of-ENF (PoENF) algorithm where a validator is qualified to generate a new block if and only if a proper ENF-containing multimedia signal proof is produced within the current round. The decentralized database (DDB) is adopted in order to guarantee efficiency and resilience of raw ENF proofs on the off-chain storage. A proof-of-concept prototype is developed and tested in a physical IoVT network environment. The experimental results validated the feasibility of the proposed EconLedger to provide a trust-free and partially decentralized security infrastructure for IoVT edge networks.
Open access
2 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
Syed Yawar Abbas Zaidi, Munam Ali Shah, Hasan Ali Khattak, Carsten Maple · 7 authors
With opportunities brought by the Internet of Things (IoT), it is quite a challenge to maintain concurrency and privacy when a huge number of resource-constrained distributed devices are involved. Blockchain have become popular for its benefits, including decentralization, persistence, immutability, auditability, and consensus. Great attention has been received by the IoT based on the construction of distributed file systems worldwide. A new generation of IoT-based distributed file systems has been proposed with the integration of Blockchain technology, such as the Swarm and Interplanetary File System. By using IoT, new technical challenges, such as Credibility, Harmonization, large-volume data, heterogeneity, and constrained resources are arising. To ensure data security in IoT, centralized access control technologies do not provide credibility. In this work, we propose an attribute-based access control model for the IoT. The access control lists are not required for each device by the system. It enhances access management in terms of effectiveness. Moreover, we use blockchain technology for recording the attribute, avoiding data tempering, and eliminating a single point of failure at edge computing devices. IoT devices control the user’s environment as well as his or her private data collection; therefore, the exposure of the user’s personal data to non-trusted private and public servers may result in privacy leakage. To automate the system, smart contracts are used for data accessing, whereas Proof of Authority is used for enhancing the system’s performance and optimizing gas consumption. Through smart contracts, ciphertext can be stored on a blockchain by the data owner. Data can only be decrypted in a valid access period, whereas in blockchains, the trace function is achieved by the storage of invocation and the creation of smart contracts. Scalability issues can also be resolved by using the multichain blockchain. Eventually, it is concluded from the simulation results that the proposed system is efficient for IoT.
Anderson Melo de Morais, Jorge da Silva Correia Neto, Robson Wagner Albuquerque de Medeiros, Obionor de Oliveira Nóbrega · 5 authors
Education generates a considerable amount of data and information, it is necessary to manage this data securely, avoiding problems of falsification and tampering with diplomas, certificates, and other important student documents. In addition, distance learning is becoming more popular due to the Covid-19 pandemic period, where courses are offered in virtual learning environments such as Moodle. Blockchain technology can be used as a tool to ensure the security of data managed by Moodle. However, there is a gap in current state-of-the-art solutions for integrating these data with Blockchain platforms. This work proposes BlockMoodle, a solution developed to integrate Moodle with Blockchain Ethereum. This work also performs an analysis of the financial cost of using the tool. In addition, a performance evaluation of the proposed solution is also carried out considering different usage scenarios. Finally, the conclusions and future work to be developed are presented.
Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a technology where computing devices are connected and form a network. IoT faces many security and privacy issues due to less computation power, heterogeneity, and limited resources available with its devices. Data is transferred among these devices with little or no human interaction. Data Confidentiality and Integrity are very critical parameters and can be achieved by securely sharing information in IoT scenarios. Managing and maintaining trust in exchanging information over IoT becomes very significant. Recent researches have focused on the applications of Blockchain technology for assuring trust management in IoT networks. Blockchain provides completely distinct and more secure approaches. This survey paper aims to illustrate the significance of integrating Blockchain technology in the IoT environment to ensure trust among IoT devices. Particularly, first we give an overview and security aspects of IoT and Blockchain technologies. Then we trace out some important challenges and issues of trusted IoT with potential solutions by Blockchain. Following this, we highlight some complications in the integration of Blockchain with IoT. Finally, we present a comparative analysis between traditional and Blockchain-based trust management techniques as proof of work to represent the significance of Blockchain in ensuring trust.
Yiping Zuo, Shi Jin, Shengli Zhang, Yu Han · 5 authors
The proof-of-work (PoW) mining process requires a large amount of intensive computing, which leads to some plights such as heavy equipment and fixed access nodes in traditional blockchain networks. A novel mobile blockchain network with the help of a mobile edge computing (MEC) server is presented, where all mobile users participate in the PoW mining process. The traditional Bitcoin network adjusts the target difficulty value to ensure a stable block time. However, for MEC-assisted mobile blockchain networks, the adjusted difficulty value needs to be broadcast to all mobile users, which results in expensive communication costs. To maintain a stable block time of mobile blockchain networks, we formulate the delay-limited computation offloading strategy of the PoW-based mining task as a non-cooperative game that maximizes an individual revenue in the MEC-assisted mobile blockchain network. Specifically, the non-cooperative game problem can be divided into multiple sub-game optimization problems to obtain final solutions for all users. We analyze the sub-game optimization problem and prove the existence of Nash equilibrium (NE) of the non-cooperative game. Moreover, we design an alternating iterative algorithm based on the continuous relaxation and greedy rounding (CRGR) to achieve the NE of this game. Given the sub-optimal delay-limited computation offloading results, we also derive the optimal transmit power for an individual user within the maximum mining delay range. From the analytical results, we can see that the proposed CRGR-based alternating iterative algorithm can efficiently attain the sub-optimal delay-limited computation offloading strategies of all mobile users in the polynomial time. The individual transmit power increases accordingly with the delay-limited computation offloading strategies of all users. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed CRGR-based alternating iterative algorithm has fast convergence and good stability.
Panayiotis Christodoulou, Andreas S. Andreou, Z. Zinonos
Our epoch is continuously disrupted by the rapid technological advances in various scientific domains that aim to drive forward the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This disruption resulted in the introduction of fields that present advanced ways to train students as well as ways to secure the exchange of data and guarantee the integrity of those data. In this paper, a decentralized application (dApp), namely skillsChain, is introduced that utilizes Blockchain in educational robotics to securely track the development of students' skills so as to be transferable beyond the confines of the academic world. This work outlines a state-of-the-art architecture in which educational robotics can directly execute transactions on a public ledger when certain requirements are met without the need of educators. In addition, it allows students to safely exchange their skills' records with third parties. The proposed application was designed and deployed on a public distributed ledger and the final results present its efficacy.
Open access
2 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations
Introducing IBchain, a new blockchain architecture with the Internet of Things (IoT) could be an attractive framework regarding improvements in connectivity implementation through the smart cities. Instead of meriting innovation and security, the IoT links people, sites, products and consequently, also provides opportunities. Everything that transfers information to the IoT system is integrated by advanced microchips, sensors, and actuators in actual things. The analytical ability of the IoT converts observations into actions, impacting business advancements and significant ways of activity. IoT enables connected objects to transmit information to personal blockchain systems to create tamper-resistant transaction records. The information from sensors and microchips is progressing rapidly with blockchain ledgers, making them more portable and relevant for immediate conversations. In IBchain methodology, the smart objects are permissible to connect securely with other smart objects in diverse situations. IBchain creates an innovative blockchain-based processing configuration through the IoT. The IBchain could analyze blockchain to the main expertise or supports the IoT validation and trustworthiness. It reinforces blockchain and cloud to build an empowering IoT ubiquitous situation for secure communication among the smart devices.
Vishal Sharma, Zengpeng Li, Paweł Szałachowski, Teik Guan Tan · 5 authors
Decentralized control, low-complexity, flexible and efficient communications are the requirements of an architecture that aims to scale blockchains beyond the current state. Such properties are attainable by reducing ledger size and providing parallel operations in the blockchain. Sharding is one of the approaches that lower the burden of the nodes and enhance performance. However, the current solutions lack the features for resolving concurrency during cross-shard communications. With multiple participants belonging to different shards, handling concurrent operations is essential for optimal sharding. This issue becomes prominent due to the lack of architectural support and requires additional consensus for cross-shard communications. Relying on the advantages of hybrid Proof-of-Work/Proof-of-Stake (PoW/PoS), like Ethereum , hybrid consensus and 2-hop blockchain , we propose Reinshard , a new blockchain that inherits the properties of hybrid consensus for optimal sharding. Reinshard uses PoW and PoS chain-pairs with PoS sub-chains for all the valid chain-pairs where the hybrid consensus is attained through Verifiable Delay Function (VDF). Our architecture provides a secure method of arranging nodes in shards and resolves concurrency conflicts using the delay factor of VDF. The applicability of Reinshard is demonstrated through security and experimental evaluations. A practical concurrency problem is considered to show the efficacy of Reinshard in providing optimal sharding.
The design of sharding aims to solve the scalability challenge in a blockchain network. Typically, by splitting the whole blockchain network into smaller shards, the transaction throughput can be significantly improved. However, distributing fewer attesting nodes for transactions in a shard may cause higher security risks. This paper analyzes the security level of transaction verification in different types of shards and transactions. The analyzed result indicates that the size of shards and validating nodes number may influence the transaction security in shards. And the random distribution of attesting nodes can reduce such influence and improve the reliability of consensus in shards.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Mirza Jabbar Aziz Baig, M. Tariq Iqbal, Mohsin Jamil, Jahangir Khan
An open-source P2P energy trading platform facilitates energy trading amongst the peers. The proposed system provides real time data acquisition, monitoring and control of self-generated energy at a remote location. The trading activities are done on a web interface that uses a private Ethereum blockchain. A smart contract is deployed on the Ethereum blockchain and the trading activities performed on the web interface are recorded on a tamper-proof blockchain network. An internet of things platform is used to monitor and control the self-generated energy. Energy data is collected and processed by means of ESP32-S2 microcontrollers using field instrumentation devices which are connected to the voltage source and load. An open-source decentralized Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading system, designed on the blockchain and internet of things (IoT) architecture is proposed. The hardware setup includes a relay, a current sensor, a voltage sensor, a Wi-Fi router and ESP32-S2 microcontroller. For data transfer the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol is used over a local network. ESP32-S2 is set up as MQTT client and Node-Red IoT server is used as MQTT broker. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) request method is implemented to connect the Node-Red server with the web interface developed using React.JS library. The system design, implementation, testing, and results are presented in this paper.
The railway is a complex technical system of systems in a multi-stakeholder environment. The implementation of digital technologies is essential for achieving operational excellence and addressing stakeholders’ needs and requirements in relation to the railways. Digitalization is highly dependent on an appropriate digital infrastructure provided through proper information logistics, whereas cybersecurity is critical for the overall security and safety of the railway systems. However, it is important to understand the various issues and challenges presented by governance, business, and technical requirements. Hence, this paper is the first link in the chain to explore, understand, and address such requirements. The purpose of this paper is to identify aspects of distributed ledgers and to provide a taxonomy of issues and challenges to develop a secure and resilient data sharing framework for railway stakeholders.
Sep 9, 2021·(2021, August). Application of Blockchain Technology for Educational Platform. In International Conference on Human Interaction and Emerging Technologies (pp. 1283-1287). Springer, Cham
Matija Šipek, Martin Žagar, Branko Mihaljević, Nikola Drašković
Nowadays, huge amounts of data are generated every second, and a quantity of that data can be defined as sensitive. Blockchain technology has private, secure, transparent and decentralized exchange of data as native. It is adaptable and can be used in a wide range of Internet-based interactive systems in academic and industrial settings. The essential part of programmable distributed ledgers such as Ethereum, Polkadot, Cardano and other Web 3.0 technologies are smart contracts. Smart contracts are programs executed on the global blockchain, the code is public as well as all of the data managed within the transactions, thus creating a system that is reliable and cannot be cheated if designed properly. In this paper, in order to make the educational system more transparent and versatile we will describe an educational learning platform designed as a distributed system.
This study aims to build smart supply chains for the first time using the internet of things (IoT) and blockchain. Classification and clarification of causal relationships can provide a useful framework for researchers and professionals who seek to implement an intelligent supply chain using IoT tools in a blockchain platform, and it also demonstrates the intensity of communications indicating such relationships. The research methodology is mixed method, comprised of qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative method includes the Delphi method used for selecting indigenous components and features proper for the pattern. The quantitative method is the Dematel method used for assessing the relationships between the available concepts in the pattern and accessing the network structure between components. Interpretative Structural Modeling is also employed to classify the network structure obtained from the Dematel technique. The findings of the study identify indicators of IoT and blockchain as causes based on Dematel, application of tools, components interconnectedness, optimal decision making, automatedness, integration, innovation and learning, which are indicators of smart supply chain, are the effects in this study.