Blockchain Papers

Amrendra Singh Yadav, Dharmender Singh Kushwaha

No abstract is available for this record.

Rong Yu, Zhenqi Wang, Conghui Zhang, Shaopeng Guan

In the housing rental market, some intermediaries often publish malicious rental prices or provide false housing information, taking advantage of the asymmetry and opacity of the rental market, to harm the interests of tenants. Blockchain has the characteristics of decentralization, immutability, and trustworthiness, which can well address the problems faced in the housing rental market. In this paper, we establish a secure transaction platform for housing rental based on blockchain. First of all, we replace the trusted third party in the traditional house rental platform using the blockchain technology to reduce the trust cost of the platform. Then, we adopt an identity access mechanism based on zero-knowledge proof to ensure the identity legality of users in the housing rental platform. Finally, homomorphic encryption algorithms are employed to protect the private information of users in the process of housing transactions. The evaluation results show that the proposed scheme can well solve the drawbacks of the traditional housing rental platform and ensure the safety of transactions between the rental parties on the platform.

Yang Yang, Robert H. Deng, Wenzhong Guo, Hongju Cheng · 7 authors

In this article, we proposedualtraceabledistributedattributebasedencryption withsubsetkeywordsearch system (DT-DABE-SKS, abbreviated as$\mathcal {DT}$) to simultaneously realize data source trace (secure provenance) and user trace (traitor trace) and flexible subset keyword search from polynomial interpolation. Leveraging non-interactive zero-knowledge proof technology,$\mathcal {DT}$preserves privacy for both data providers and users in normal circumstances, but a trusted authority can disclose their real identities if necessary, such as the providers deceitfully uploading false data or users maliciously leaking secret attribute key. Next, we introduce the new conception of updatable and transferable message-lock encryption (UT-MLE) for block-level dynamic encrypted file update, where the owner does not have to download the whole ciphertext, decrypt, re-encrypt and upload for minor document modifications. In addition, the owner is permitted to transfer file ownership to other system customers with efficient computation in an authenticated manner. A nontrivial integration of$\mathcal {DT}$and UT-MLE lead to the distributed ABSE with ownership transfer system ($\mathcal {DTOT}$) to enjoy the above merits. We formally define$\mathcal {DT}$, UT-MLE, and their security model. Then, the instantiations of$\mathcal {DT}$and UT-MLE, and the formal security proof are presented. Comprehensive comparison and experimental analysis based on real dataset affirm their feasibility.

J. Prabhudas, Reddy CH Pradeep

Blockchain is an empowering technology with distributed database documents or public ledger of transactions shared amongst organizations or individuals to provide trust and transparency. The decentralized distributed feature on top of cryptography makes blockchain grant higher safety than other systems. The significance of blockchain is to record transactions that are consensually shared and synchronized across multiple nodes of a network. In addition to these facts maintaining the integrity of the data, the fault tolerance of the system, scalability, and security are crucial concerns to be considered in upholding the reliability of a network. To mitigate with the prescribed facts and to make the nodes agree on the authenticity of the transaction, the consensus mechanism plays a significant role. The consensus mechanisms will ensure the correctness of solved transactions among nodes in the network, providing legitimized transactions. However, there are some major limitations and challenges and this chapter will carry out a comprehensive study of each consensus algorithm with its merits, demerits, and applications. Further, this chapter will address a factual study of possible solutions provided by research giants with their adapted innovative protocols thereby helping researchers to draw insights into this field.

Yijing Li, Xiaofeng Tao, Xuefei Zhang, Junjie Liu · 5 authors

In recent years, the privacy issue in Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) has gained a lot of concern. The privacy problem is even more severe in autonomous driving business than the other businesses in VEC such as ordinary navigation. Federated learning (FL), which is a privacy-preserved strategy proposed by Google, has become a hot trend to solve the privacy problem in many fields including VEC. Therefore, we introduce FL into autonomous driving to preserve vehicular privacy by keeping original data in a local vehicle and sharing the training model parameter only with the help of MEC server. Moreover, different from the common assumption of honest MEC server and honest vehicle in former studies, we take the malicious MEC servers and malicious vehicles into account. First, we consider honest-but-curious MEC server and malicious vehicles and propose a traceable identity-based privacy preserving scheme to protect the vehicular message privacy where improved Dijk-Gentry-Halevi-Vaikutanathan (DGHV) algorithm is proposed and a blockchain-based Reputation-based Incentive Autonomous Driving Mechanism (RIADM) is adopted. Further, when the case comes to the non-credibility of both parties where semi-honest MEC server and malicious vehicles are considered, we propose an anonymous identity-based privacy preserving scheme to protect the identity privacy of vehicles with Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP). Based on the simulation of virtual autonomous driving based on real-world road images, it is verified that our proposes scheme can reduce 73.7 % training loss of autonomous driving, increase the accuracy to around 5.55 % while keeps effective privacy of message and identity under the threat of dishonest MEC server and vehicles.

Jie Cui, Fenqiang Ouyang, Zuobin Ying, Lu Wei · 5 authors

The large amount of driving data can help intelligent vehicles make decisions to drive safely, improve vehicular services and enhance driving experience. In traditional vehicular networks, data sharing needs to be done with roadside units (RSUs). However, RSUs cannot be entirely trusted and the data stored in the RSUs may be tampered with. In addition, the deployment of RSUs along roads consumes a large amount of social resources. Further, data sharing between vehicles lacks a trusted environment, and vehicles may be unwilling to share data with others because of data security and privacy concerns. Moreover, in the event of unauthorized data sharing, the source of the leaked data is difficult to trace. In this study, we exploit consortium blockchain technology to achieve traceable and anonymous vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) data sharing, effectively preventing second-hand sharing of data. The combination of 5G and blockchain makes it possible to share data without using RSUs. We design an enhanced delegated proof-of-stake consensus algorithm to make it more suitable for applications in the distributed Internet of Vehicles (IoV). A comprehensive analysis shows that the proposed scheme is secure and efficient.

Wei Wang, Lianhai Wang, Peijun Zhang, Shujiang Xu · 7 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Ammar Ahmed Khan, Muhammad Mubashir Khan, Kashif Mehboob Khan, Junaid Arshad · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Shantanu Pal, Ali Dorri, Raja Jurdak

With the rapid development of wireless sensor networks, smart devices, and traditional information and communication technologies, there is tremendous growth in the use of Internet of Things (IoT) applications and services in our everyday life. IoT systems deal with high volumes of data. This data can be particularly sensitive, as it may include health, financial, location, and other highly personal information. Fine-grained security management in IoT demands effective access control. Several proposals discuss access control for the IoT, however, a limited focus is given to the emerging blockchain-based solutions for IoT access control. In this paper, we review the recent trends and critical needs for blockchain-based solutions for IoT access control. We identify several important aspects of blockchain, including decentralised control, secure storage and sharing information in a trustless manner, for IoT access control including their benefits and limitations. Finally, we note some future research directions on how to converge blockchain in IoT access control efficiently and effectively.

Safa Otoum, Ismaeel Al Ridhawi, Hussein T. Mouftah

Network trustworthiness is considered a very crucial element in network security and is developed through positive experiences, guarantees, clarity, and responsibility. Trustworthiness becomes even more compelling with the ever-expanding set of Internet of Things (IoT) smart city services and applications. Most of today’s network trustworthy solutions are considered inadequate, notably for critical applications where IoT devices may be exposed and easily compromised. In this article, we propose an adaptive framework that integrates both federated learning and blockchain to achieve both network trustworthiness and security. The solution is capable of dealing with individuals’ trust as a probability and estimates the end devices’ trust values belonging to different networks subject to achieving security criteria. We evaluate and verify the proposed model through simulation to showcase the effectiveness of the framework in terms of network lifetime, energy consumption, and trust using multiple factors. Results show that the proposed model maintains high accuracy and detection rates with values of$\approx 0.93$and$\approx 0.96$, respectively.

Bin Jia, Xiaosong Zhang, Jiewen Liu, Yang Zhang · 6 authors

With rapid growth in data volume generated from different industrial devices in IoT, the protection for sensitive and private data in data sharing has become crucial. At present, federated learning for data security has arisen, and it can solve the security concerns on data sharing by model sharing on Internet of mutual distrust. However, the hackers still launch attack aiming at the security vulnerabilities (e.g., model extraction attack and model reverse attack) in federated learning. In this article, to address the above problems, we first design an application model of blockchain-enabled federated learning in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and formulate our data protection aggregation scheme based on the above model. Then, we give the distributed K-means clustering based on differential privacy and homomorphic encryption, and the distributed random forest with differential privacy and the distributed AdaBoost with homomorphic encryption methods, which enable multiple data protection in data sharing and model sharing. Finally, we integrate the methods with blockchain and federated learning, and provide the complete security analysis. Extensive experimental results show that our aggregation scheme and working mechanism have the better performance in the selected indicators.

Thiago Nóbrega, Carlos Eduardo Santos Pires, Dimas Cassimiro Nascimento

No abstract is available for this record.

Soumya Banerjee, Samia Bouzefrane, Amar Abane

The widespread decentralized applications and Blockchain components significantly boost the security frameworks in many vertical applications and use-cases including different secured payment methods and smart contracts. The integral part of any smart contract is the validation of the stake-holder identity, in general, while ideally being achieved without the third-party involvement. Recent industrial research works introduce the sovereign-identity system, where Blockchain becomes a decentralized component to establish a self-certified identity and to avoid a centralized trust third party. Hence, the classification of distributed transactions with respect to identity validation across several users becomes more challenging, especially because of the massive and sensitive identities that are issued through many users and IoT devices and that are used to validate transactions. In this context, it is important to identify and classify the malicious and non-malicious types of transactions. Our proposed method achieves the target of identity classifications from variety of transaction data. Since different users may have different device usage patterns, the data samples and labels located on any individual device may follow a different distribution, which cannot represent the global data distribution. Therefore, the solution could be bi-focal to compensate the gap. This paper coins the approach of hybridizing the consensus where as to initiate a machine learning mechanism to collect the local data globally through a permission driven and a federated approach. We introduce here a Federated Reinforcement learning to be improvised for distributed independent data as a policy of consortium while binding the proof of consensus more centrally authenticated.

Vincent Messié, Gaël Fromentoux, Nathalie Labidurie, Benoît Radier · 6 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Mansoor Ali, Hadis Karimipour, Muhammad Adnan Tariq

No abstract is available for this record.

Marta Bellés-Muñoz, Jordi Baylina, Vanesa Daza, José L. Muñoz

The benefits of blockchain technologies for industrial applications are unquestionable. However, it is a considerable challenge to use a transparent system like blockchain and at the same time provide privacy to sensitive data. Privacy technologies permit conducting private transactions about sensitive data over transparent networks, but their inherent complexity has been overwhelming for many developers. Closing the gap between developers and privacy-preserving technologies would help to the full adoption of the privacy by design framework for blockchain software. To this end, in this paper we present the software tools we have implemented to bring complex privacy technologies closer to developers and facilitate the job of implementing privacy-enabled blockchain applications.

Meiyan Xiao, Qiong Huang, Ying Miao, Shunpeng Li · 5 authors

Traditional data sharing systems are facing new challenges when implementing access control with more and more complex data sharing requirements. Flexibility of user revocation in completely decentralized environments needs to be taken into account. In this article, we propose a Key-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption scheme with Multiple and Flexible Revocation (MAFR-KP-ABE) to achieve the features of decentralized authorization and flexible revocation. We prove the security of our MAFR-KP-ABE scheme in the standard model and provide the comparison with relevant schemes to demonstrate its efficiency. Then we propose a fine-grained access control system based on MAFR-KP-ABE scheme and blockchain that matches the need of paid data sharing services with several security properties enhanced. Security analysis and system implementation are given subsequently to demonstrate our system efficient and secure.

Sheng Gao, Qianqian Su, Rui Zhang, Jianming Zhu · 6 authors

Traditional identity authentication solutions mostly rely on a trusted central entity, so they cannot handle single points of failure well. In addition, most of these traditional schemes need to store a large amount of identity authentication or public key information, which makes the schemes difficult to expand and use in distributed situations. In addition, the user prefers to protect the privacy of their information during the identity verification process. Due to the open and decentralized nature of the blockchain, the existing identity verification schemes are difficult to apply well in the blockchain. To solve this problem, in this article, we propose a privacy protection identity authentication scheme based on the blockchain. The user independently generates multiple-identity information, and these identities can be used to apply for an identity certificate. Authorities use the ECDSA signature algorithm and the RSA encryption algorithm to complete the distribution of the identity certificate based on the identity information and complete the registration of identity authentication through the smart contract on the blockchain. On the one hand, it can realize the protection of real identity information; on the other hand, it can avoid the storage overhead caused by the need to store a large number of certificates or key pairs. Due to the use of the blockchain, there is no single point of failure in the authentication process, and it can be applied to distributed scenarios. The security and performance analysis show that the proposed scheme can meet security requirements and is feasible.

Haiwen Chen, Jiaping Yu, Huan Zhou, Tongqing Zhou · 6 authors

With the development of edge computing, edge storage solutions are attracting widespread attention. When facing the requirements of lower latency and faster access speed from end devices, edge storage solutions are considered to be an alternative to the cloud. However, edges are usually owned by small organizations which have limited operations and maintenance capabilities. This makes these edge devices can be easily disabled by external attacks or internal hardware failures. Besides, the heterogeneity of the edge devices will also make it difficult to price the edge resources uniformly. To tackle these problems, we propose SmartStore: an auction mechanism based on blockchain to allocate edge resources. Considering centralized solutions have access bottlenecks and trust issues, we built SmartStore on the smart contract. With Bayesian game theory, SmartStore can analyze how data owners (DO) and edges price the resources can maximize their benefits. From an economic perspective, both DO and edges can make full use of edge heterogeneous resources with SmartStore. Besides, a two-stage submission strategy is proposed to complete the sealed auction. Furthermore, considering the reliability of edge storage, we propose a cluster-based block distribution algorithm for SmartStore's intelligent edge recommendation process. SmartStore ensures the reliability of edge storage while maximizing the benefits and resource utilization of both parties. Finally, we conduct specific experiments on the proposed auction smart contract through “Ethereum” and the experimental results of implementation show the effectiveness and efficiency of our SmartStore.

Qin Wang, Shiping Chen, Yang Xiang

Blockchain records transactions with various protection techniques against tampering. To meet the requirements on cooperation and anonymity of companies and organizations, researchers have developed a few solutions. Ring signature-based schemes allow multiple participants cooperatively to manage while preserving their individuals’ privacy. However, the solutions cannot work properly due to the increased computing complexity along with the expanded group size. In this article, we propose a Multi-center Anonymous Blockchain-based (MAB) system, with joint management for the consortium and privacy protection for the participants. To achieve that, we formalize the syntax used by the MAB system and present a general construction based on a modular design. By applying cryptographic primitives to each module, we instantiate our scheme with anonymity and decentralization. Furthermore, we carry out a comprehensive formal analysis of our exemplified scheme. A proof of concept simulation is provided to show the feasibility. The results demonstrate security and efficiency from both theoretical perspectives and practical perspectives.

Enmao Diao, Jie Ding, Vahid Tarokh

Collaborations among multiple organizations, such as financial institutions, medical centers, and retail markets in decentralized settings are crucial to providing improved service and performance. However, the underlying organizations may have little interest in sharing their local data, models, and objective functions. These requirements have created new challenges for multi-organization collaboration. In this work, we propose Gradient Assisted Learning (GAL), a new method for multiple organizations to assist each other in supervised learning tasks without sharing local data, models, and objective functions. In this framework, all participants collaboratively optimize the aggregate of local loss functions, and each participant autonomously builds its own model by iteratively fitting the gradients of the overarching objective function. We also provide asymptotic convergence analysis and practical case studies of GAL. Experimental studies demonstrate that GAL can achieve performance close to centralized learning when all data, models, and objective functions are fully disclosed.

Shayan Eskandari, Mehdi Salehi, Wanyun Catherine Gu, Jeremy Clark

One fundamental limitation of blockchain-based smart contracts is that they execute in a closed environment. Thus, they only have access to data and functionality that is already on the blockchain, or is fed into the blockchain. Any interactions with the real world need to be mediated by a bridge service, which is called an oracle. As decentralized applications mature, oracles are playing an increasingly prominent role. With their evolution comes more attacks, necessitating greater attention to their trust model. In this systemization of knowledge paper (SoK), we dissect the design alternatives for oracles, showcase attacks, and discuss attack mitigation strategies.

Haoye Chai, Supeng Leng, Fan Wu

Knowledge sharing in IoV shows great potential for future vehicular networks. Vehicles, platoons and even traffic infrastructures can exchange the driving experiences or sensing data to facilitate intelligent transportation applications such as autodriving and traffic analysis. However, it is challenging for vehicular knowledge-sharing systems to address the issues brought by information security and vehicular mobility. Although blockchain technology shows defensibility in dealing with trust issues, it is difficult to be applied in large-scale vehicular networks due to the computation consumption of mining process and frequent synchronization of ledger. In this paper, we propose a directed acyclic graph (DAG) enabled knowledge-sharing framework in which vehicular knowledge is encapsulated as a site in the DAG. A new tip selection algorithm (TSA) and a fast authentication scheme for cross-regional vehicles are designed to reduce computation and storage expenditure. Simulation results show that the proposed DAG framework can achieve a higher knowledge sharing quality and lower authentication latency compared with traditional DAG systems.

Ziye Geng, Yunhua He, Chao Wang, Gang Xu · 6 authors

Nowadays, the quality of cloud services offered by different service providers varies greatly. Reputation mechanism, as a better service evaluation method, can help standardize and regulate the cloud service market. However, existing reputation systems either rely on a trusted third party with security and privacy issues, or lack reliable evaluation. To address the above issues, we propose a blockchain based privacy-preserving dynamic reputation mechanism for cloud service and a reputation management smart contract (RM) is designed to implement trusted reputation computation. The reputation integrates conformance trust in the subjective view and recommendation trust in the objective view together to provide a comprehensive evaluation. Besides, a miner selection algorithm is designed to prevent miners from launching a collusion attack. Moreover, the Paillier homomorphic encryption algorithm (PHE) is introduced to encrypt the sensitive data of customers, ensuring the security of data stored on the blockchain. Experiment results reveal that the proposed model is feasible and the performance of encryption is acceptable.