Muhammad Noman Sohail, Adeel Anjum, Iftikhar Ahmed Saeed, Madiha Haider Syed · 6 authors
Connecting smart industrial components to computer networks revolutionizes business operations. However, in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the sharing of data has bandwidth, computational, and privacy issues. Researchers presented cloud computing and fine-grained access control to overcome these challenges. However, traditional centralized computing systems involve single points of failure. To mitigate these challenges, we have proposed a secure and incentive-based data-sharing framework for IIoT systems using blockchain technology. We leverage blockchain due to its ability to provide secure and tamper-resistant data storage and sharing as participants store their data on a distributed ledger (DL), preventing unauthorized access. A security protocol is designed that utilizes the properties of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC). Moreover, Shapley value is employed to calculate revenue and distribute it fairly. To perform the formal security evaluation, we have conducted extensive simulations using the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) and Scyther protocol simulation tools, which demonstrated that our protocol is robust against various adversarial attacks. The experimental results show that the proposed incentive distribution framework demonstrated fairness in the distribution of revenue among participants.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Cryptography and Data Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Muhammad Iqbal, Arshad Iqbal, Abdullah Alshammari, Ihtisham Ali · 6 authors
Decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are digital assets with a price volatility nature, that allow for blockchain-based, peer-to-peer monetary transactions. Due to the price volatility problem with decentralized cryptocurrencies, research into the underlying pricing mechanism is required. Additionally, the behavior of Bitcoin prices is non-stationary, meaning that the statistical distribution of data varies over time. The proposed framework demonstrates the use of sophisticated machine learning models in predicting the short and medium-term trends and actual values of Bitcoin prices. This research goes beyond previous work that has only looked at machine learning-based categorization for a single day by instead using such models to forecast price changes seven, thirty, and ninety days into the future. The generated models are useful and work admirably, with the classification models reaching a maximum accuracy enhancement up to 31.48% for a 90-day prediction and a 11.76% F1-score for a forecast extending to the thirtieth day. In the case of regression the margin of error shifts from the one-time horizon for price projections to the next. A significant notable downfall occurs in different error metrics. These findings suggest that the models given here outperform those already found in the literature.
Open access
Digital Media Forensic Detection
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
The current explosion in user traffic necessitates the placement of edge servers in proximity to the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, allowing computation tasks to be offloaded to edge servers. This strategy aims to minimize the average delay of traffic requests by enabling user/IoT devices to locally execute time-sensitive tasks or offload them to edge servers within the mobile edge computing (MEC) paradigm. This new paradigm will also allow to cache contents at edge servers, but considering such an increasing number of user requests and limited storage capability of edge servers, selection in edge caching decisions is challenging. In addition, while there is general consensus that this technology may provide a variety of benefits, there are serious questions about its security implications. This is because malicious users can manipulate the caching decisions of the edge servers by sending fake traffic requests, which reduces the caching efficiency of the resource-constrained edge servers. Driven by these issues, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based content caching and computation strategy to validate the authenticity of cached content and thus prevent unauthorized requests from malicious users. Specifically, the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism is presented to handle low computational work, validate the process of blocks, and manage the transactions between edge servers and legitimate users. Then, a Deep Q Network (DQN)-based solution is proposed to intelligently develop an effective content caching and computation strategy. According to performance evaluation, the proposed model significantly outperforms the conventional methods. It improves the cache hit rate by up to 8.2% on average and reduces the response delay by up to 7.45% on average.
Open access
Caching and Content Delivery
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Kuznetsov, Oleksandr, Anton Yezhov, Vladyslav Yusiuk, Alexandr Kuznetsov
Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) have emerged as a promising solution to address the scalability challenges in modern blockchain systems. This study proposes a methodology for generating and verifying ZKPs to ensure the computational integrity of cryptographic hashing, specifically focusing on the SHA-256 algorithm. By leveraging the Plonky2 framework, which implements the PLONK protocol with the FRI commitment scheme, we demonstrate the efficiency and scalability of our approach for both random data and real data blocks from the NEAR blockchain. The experimental results show consistent performance across different data sizes and types, with the time required for proof generation and verification remaining within acceptable limits. The generated circuits and proofs maintain manageable sizes, even for real-world data blocks with a large number of transactions. The proposed methodology contributes to the development of secure and trustworthy blockchain systems, where the integrity of computations can be verified without revealing the underlying data. Further research is needed to assess the applicability of the approach to other cryptographic primitives and to evaluate its performance in more complex real-world scenarios.
Open access
3 source records
Cryptography and Data Security
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
In the current digital landscape, almost everyone is on social media or various social media platforms. People use social media for a plethora of purposes, which include staying connected with friends and family, accessing information and updates about ongoing events, entertainment, networking with professionals, expressing themselves to a wide range of users, promoting businesses, joining online communities and engaging in various activities which has led to an increase in the consumption and usage of online social networks (OSN). One of the reasons for such a growth is their features such as ubiquitous access, on-demand service, friendship networks, user engagement strategies like recommendation engines, etc. However, there are various limitations to the current approach, such as the centralization of control, lack of data ownership, poor access control, fake news, bot accounts, censorship, digital rights management issues, etc. To address these limitations, a paradigm shift is necessary. This paper aims to develop a social media application where every post can be converted to a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) and be sold to earn money. Interplanetary File System (IPFS) is used as the decentralized storage. Algorithms for all the functionalities of the applications are given along with an algorithm for a reputation score for every user and their posts in social media are also proposed.
Open access
3 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Ethereum Blockchain technology introduced a competitive environment in the financial sector. Consequently, new technologies emerged, such as Smart Contracts (SCs), which preclude code corrections due to their immutable nature. But the incorrect and faulty uploaded SCs led to uninvited penetrations into SCs’ accounts, resulting in considerable customer losses. This SC’s drawback requires tools to test the SCs and paves the way for research on vulnerability detection techniques. Our survey paper comprehensively reviews 41 SC tools and presents the vulnerability detection techniques (VDTs) of the several previously discussed tools by dividing them into general and specific classes. Finally, we also perform a classification of detection techniques to standardize the approaches. Thus, our study will help SC developers and security analysts to streamline the security of SCs and reduce the chances of malicious monetary transfers.
Open access
2 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Traditional voting systems mainly comprise of paper polling, electronic ballot system (EVM), mechanical devices, etc., and demand the physical presence of the voters. In the new age of digitization, the electronic voting system has come up with a unique facility to cast votes from any discreet place. However, the e-voting system has to face several challenges regarding security and privacy. To overcome such obstructions, blockchain is introduced in e-voting applications that preserve anonymity, security, and consistency of voter-related information with the help of Merkle tree and hash digest. Hence, any discrepancy can immediately be detected whenever the hash values of the respective block have been modified and consequently, the whole block is discarded. In this research, a novel e-voting scheme is proposed following the decentralized service-oriented architecture of Exonum private blockchain, hybrid consensus algorithm, and Elliptic Curve Diffie-Helmen (ECDH) protocol to agree upon a secure session key among different participants. Moreover, the proposed scheme (ECC-EXONUM-eVOTING) employs a zero-knowledge protocol and is customized to work over idemix technologies with a blind signature scheme. Numerous well-known cryptographic attacks are analyzed formally using the probabilistic random oracle model and informally for validating the security strength of ECC-EXONUM-eVOTING. As a result, it is found that the proposed scheme is well-defended against all potential security concerns. Furthermore, the scheme is simulated using both Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) and Scyther tools to demonstrate the proposed scheme is not prone to any security attacks. Finally, it is concluded that the proposed scheme is well-suited for secure e-voting applications.
Open access
Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Vehicle re-identification (ReID) is a hot topic in intelligent city surveillance. With the development of smart cameras and vehicular edge computing (VEC), numerous media data has opened up new possibilities for enhancing the applications of vehicle ReID. However, traditional vehicle re-identification systems face the following challenges: 1) it is difficult to recognize the identities of the vehicles in various views and similar appearance, 2) the current system is hard to be extended to large-scale of cameras in a low-trust VEC environment. To solve these problems, we propose a Blockchain-based Collaborative Vehicle ReID (BCV-ReID) system in this paper. It contains two core parts including Viewpoint-identity Query Net (VQNet) and VehicleChain (VChain). By utilizing the viewpoint information and local details simultaneously, VQNet can distinguish the vehicle identities in various cross-camera scenes. It employs viewpoint queries and spatial self-attention to learn the inherent correlation of the vehicle parts, enhancing the ability to distinguish vehicles among various viewpoints. Then, we integrate VChain with VQNet to realize a collaborative vehicle ReID system. The ReID task is illustrated from the perspective of blockchain transactions. All transactions are validated by a deeply integrated ReID consensus to counter potential malicious attacks. Experiments show that the proposed method achieves comparable results in three famous ReID datasets, as well as outstanding performance in real applications.
Video Surveillance and Tracking Methods
Advanced Neural Network Applications
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
In an era dominated by rapid digitalization of sensed data, the secure exchange of sensitive information poses a critical challenge across various sectors. Established techniques, particularly in emerging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), grapple with inherent risks in ensuring data confidentiality, integrity, and vulnerabilities to evolving cyber threats. Blockchain technology, known for its decentralized and tamper-resistant characteristics, stands as a reliable solution for secure data exchange. However, the persistent challenge lies in protecting sensitive information amidst evolving digital landscapes. Among the burgeoning applications of blockchain technology, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have emerged as digital certificates of ownership, securely recording various types of data on a distributed ledger. Unlike traditional data storage methods, NFTs offer several advantages for secure information exchange. Firstly, their tamperproof nature guarantees the authenticity and integrity of the data. Secondly, NFTs can hold both immutable and mutable data within the same token, simplifying management and access control. Moving beyond their conventional association with art and collectibles, this paper presents a novel approach that utilizes NFTs as dynamic carriers for sensitive information. Our solution leverages the immutable NFT data to serve as a secure data pointer, while the mutable NFT data holds sensitive information protected by steganography. Steganography embeds the data within the NFT, making them invisible to unauthorized eyes, while facilitating portability. This dual approach ensures both data integrity and authorized access, even in the face of evolving digital threats. A performance analysis confirms the approach's effectiveness, demonstrating its reliability, robustness, and resilience against attacks on hidden data. This paves the way for secure data transmission across diverse industries.
Open access
2 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques