Bangladesh has recently adopted the worldwide trend of digitalization, namely in the area of financial activities. In Bangladesh, the centralized nature of digital payment systems poses notable obstacles, such as lengthy transaction procedures, vulnerability to fraudulent activities, and the potential for financial theft, despite their increasing popularity. In light of these concerns, our study presents an innovative remedy that utilizes the potential of blockchain technology, in conjunction with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, to transform the field of electronic transactions. Our adoption of the proof-of-stake technique sets us apart from traditional hand-cash systems as well as the current centralized digital payment systems, providing enhanced efficiency and security. This connection facilitates fast, safe, and user-friendly transactions across several platforms, such as online and mobile applications, thereby greatly improving the digital wallet experience. Our decentralized system guarantees the integrity and immutability of every transaction while significantly decreasing transaction and maintenance expenses. This technique functions independently without any external intervention, fostering trust among users and strengthening the system against fraudulent activity. Our system is specifically designed for the high-volume transaction environment of Bangladesh’s digital economy. It has the capability to efficiently handle large transaction volumes while ensuring full security. This article elucidates the revolutionary capacity of our blockchain-powered system to promote a secure, streamlined, and inclusive digital payment ecosystem in Bangladesh, representing a crucial stride towards a technologically progressive financial landscape.
This paper explores the evidentiary significance of blockchain records and the procedural implications of integrating this technology into the U.S. judicial system, as several states have undertaken legislative measures to facilitate the admissibility of blockchain evidence. We employ a comprehensive methodological approach, including legislative analysis, comparative case law analysis, technical examination of blockchain mechanics, and stakeholder engagement. Our study suggests that blockchain evidence may be categorized as hearsay exceptions or non-hearsay, depending on the specific characteristics of the records. The paper proposes a specialized consensus mechanism for standardizing blockchain evidence authentication and outlines strategies to enhance the technology’s trustworthiness. It also highlights the importance of expert testimony in clarifying blockchain’s technical aspects for legal contexts. This study contributes to understanding blockchain’s integration into judicial systems, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive approach to its admissibility and reliability as evidence. It bridges the gap between technology and law, offering a blueprint for standardizing legal approaches to blockchain and urging ethical and transparent technology use.
Luo Feng, Ruijie Luo, Ting Chen, Ao Qiao · 8 authors
Smart contracts are integral to blockchain's growth, but their vulnerabilities pose a significant threat. Traditional vulnerability detection methods rely heavily on expert-defined complex rules that are labor-intensive and dificult to adapt to the explosive expansion of smart contracts. Some recent studies of neural network-based vulnerability detection also have room for improvement. Therefore, we propose SCVHunter, an extensible framework for smart contract vulnerability detection. Specifically, SCVHunter designs a heterogeneous semantic graph construction phase based on intermediate representations and a vulnerability detection phase based on a heterogeneous graph attention network for smart contracts. In particular, SCVHunter allows users to freely point out more important nodes in the graph, leveraging expert knowledge in a simpler way to aid the automatic capture of more information related to vulnerabilities. We tested SCVHunter on reentrancy, block info dependency, nested call, and transaction state dependency vulnerabilities. Results show remarkable performance, with accuracies of 93.72%, 91.07%, 85.41%, and 87.37% for these vulnerabilities, surpassing previous methods.
Currently, smart contract vulnerabilities (SCVs) have emerged as a major factor threatening the transaction security of blockchain. Existing state-of-the-art methods rely on deep learning to mitigate this threat. They treat each input contract as an independent entity and feed it into a deep learning model to learn vulnerability patterns by fitting vulnerability labels. It is a pity that they disregard the correlation between contracts, failing to consider the commonalities between contracts of the same type and the differences among contracts of different types. As a result, the performance of these methods falls short of the desired level. To tackle this problem, we propose a novel Contrastive Learning Enhanced Automated Recognition Approach for Smart Contract Vulnerabilities, named Clear. In particular, Clear employs a contrastive learning (CL) model to capture the fine-grained correlation information among contracts and generates correlation labels based on the relationships between contracts to guide the training process of the CL model. Finally, it combines the correlation and the semantic information of the contract to detect SCVs. Through an empirical evaluation of a large-scale real-world dataset of over 40K smart contracts and compare 13 state-of-the-art baseline methods. We show that Clear achieves (1) optimal performance over all baseline methods; (2) 9.73%-39.99% higher F1-score than existing deep learning methods.
Олег Грибунов, Sergey Igorevich Usachev, Е.А. Усачева
The work is devoted to the consideration of issues related to the impact of digitalization on modern crime. The authors identify trends in the use of virtual currency in criminal activities. Attention is drawn to the lack of clear legislative regulation regarding cryptocurrency and items of theft in this area, and existing judicial practice is analyzed. It is noted that the lack of clear legislative regulation has a negative impact on the process of proving illegal acts involving the use of cryptocurrency and other virtual currency. Law enforcers are faced with problems of determining the value of these financial assets, the lack of proven and reliable mechanisms of proof, clear schemes and algorithms for the application and use of various software products that are aimed at recording the fact of transactions, determining the time and place of transactions (transfers) made by both criminals and victims. Separately in the work, the authors pay attention to the use of specialized forensic technology tools that help in retrieving and storing information, despite the complexity of modern devices and encryption systems. The work provides examples of modern software products, for example, Elcomsoft iOS Forensic Toolkit.
Smart contracts are self-executing programs that can run on a blockchain. Due to the fact of being immutable after their deployment on blockchain, it is crucial to ensure their correctness. For this reason, various approaches for static analysis of smart contracts have been proposed, but they may be on the one hand imprecise or on the other hand difficult to train. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for detecting smart contract vulnerabilities using OpenAI's Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) language model. Our approach, called VulntHunt-GPT, uses GPT-3 to examine Ethereum smart contracts in order to identify the most popular vulnerabilities according to OWASP. We train VulntHunt-GPT on a dataset of smart contract functions and vulnerabilities to improve its accuracy. Our experiments show that VulntHunt-GPT outperforms almost all the existing state-of-the-art approaches in detecting a variety of vulnerabilities, including reentrancy attacks, integer overflow, and uninitialized storage. In addition, we conduct a case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of VulntHunt-GPT in detecting real-world smart contract vulnerabilities. We show that VulntHunt-GPT can identify previously unknown vulnerabilities in popular smart contracts, highlighting its potential for improving smart contract security. Our approach provides a promising direction for using natural language processing techniques to improve smart contract security and reduce the risk of smart contract exploits.
Integrating healthcare into traffic accident prevention through predictive modeling holds immense potential. Decentralized Defense presents a transformative vision for combating cyberbullying, prioritizing user privacy, fostering a safer online environment, and offering valuable insights for both healthcare and predictive modeling applications. As cyberbullying proliferates in social media, a pressing need exists for a robust and innovative solution that ensures user safety in the cyberspace. This paper aims toward introducing the approach of merging Blockchain and Federated Learning (FL), to create a decentralized AI solutions for cyberbullying. It has also used Alloy Language for formal modeling of social connections using specific declarations that are defined by the novel algorithm in the paper on two different datasets on Cyberbullying and are available online. The proposed novel method uses DBN to run established relation tests amongst the features in two phases, the first is LSTM to run tests to develop established features for the DBN layer and second is that these are run on various blocks of information of the blockchain. The performance of our proposed research is compared with the previous research and are evaluated using several metrics on creating the standard benchmarks for real world applications.
This study aims to assess the impacts that cryptocurrencies and blockchain have on financial accounting and auditing through eight interviews. The results allowed the authors to conclude that cryptocurrencies are considered cryptoassets, which can be classified in different ways, but above all, as inventories and intangible assets. Respondents believe that cryptocurrencies will have an impact on auditing, triggering a dematerialization of paper in its various stages. Therefore, the auditor will spend less time collecting and verifying information, focusing on activities with greater risk and complexity. It will also be possible to carry out an audit in real time and on the entire population. Regarding audit risk, accounting and auditing standards respond indirectly to the topic, yet the risk is considered high for most auditors, as they did not deepen their knowledge on the topic. Despite limitations, such as sample size, this study contributes to understanding the impact of cryptocurrencies on financial accounting and auditing in Portugal, being a pioneer in this field.
Abstract: Criminal activities in India are on the rise, with many incidents going unreported. Despite the availability of an online portal for storing the First Information Reports (FIRs) handwritten FIRs always will remain common due to some of the traditional methods and practices. And probably in most cases, the complainants should personally visit the police stations in order to file a offense report. Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) was launched in 2010 for national wide e-governance, it will operates on a centralized system and it is particularly limited to some individual states. Therefore, there is a need for the decentralized solution in order to ensure failure of a single point and secure managing of criminal complaints from the unauthorized access.
Abstract The burgeoning interest in decentralized applications (Dapps), spurred by advancements in blockchain technology, underscores the critical role of smart contracts. However, many Dapp users, often without deep knowledge of smart contracts, face financial risks due to hidden vulnerabilities. Traditional methods for detecting these vulnerabilities, including manual inspections and automated static analysis, are plagued by issues such as high rates of false positives and overlooked security flaws. To combat this, the article introduces an innovative approach using the bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT)‐ATT‐BiLSTM model for identifying potential weaknesses in smart contracts. This method leverages the BERT pre‐trained model to discern semantic features from contract opcodes, which are then refined using a Bidirectional Long Short‐Term Memory Network (BiLSTM) and augmented by an attention mechanism that prioritizes critical features. The goal is to improve the model's generalization ability and enhance detection accuracy. Experiments on various publicly available smart contract datasets confirm the model's superior performance, outperforming previous methods in key metrics like accuracy, F1‐score, and recall. This research not only offers a powerful tool to bolster smart contract security, mitigating financial risks for average users, but also serves as a valuable reference for advancements in natural language processing and deep learning.
Reentrancy, a notorious vulnerability in smart contracts, has led to millions of dollars in financial loss. However, current smart contract vulnerability detection tools suffer from a high false positive rate in identifying contracts with reentrancy vulnerabilities. Moreover, only a small portion of the detected reentrant contracts can actually be exploited by hackers, making these tools less effective in securing the Ethereum ecosystem in practice. In this paper, we propose BlockWatchdog, a tool that focuses on detecting reentrancy vulnerabilities by identifying attacker contracts. These attacker contracts are deployed by hackers to exploit vulnerable contracts automatically. By focusing on attacker contracts, BlockWatchdog effectively detects truly exploitable reentrancy vulnerabilities by identifying reentrant call flow. Additionally, BlockWatchdog is capable of detecting new types of reentrancy vulnerabilities caused by poor designs when using ERC tokens or user-defined interfaces, which cannot be detected by current rule-based tools. We implement BlockWatchdog using cross-contract static dataflow techniques based on attack logic obtained from an empirical study that analyzes attacker contracts from 281 attack incidents. BlockWatchdog is evaluated on 421,889 Ethereum contract bytecodes and identifies 113 attacker contracts that target 159 victim contracts, leading to the theft of Ether and tokens valued at approximately 908.6 million USD. Notably, only 18 of the identified 159 victim contracts can be reported by current reentrancy detection tools.
Bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption has increased significantly over the past few years. The significant growth in the industry has been matched by growth of crimes in this domain; not only in scams and dark-web illegal trading, but also in white-collar crimes with fraud and perjury occurring increasingly. With blockchain technology, the world of financial infidelity has become increasingly sophisticated. There is a common belief that blockchain and cryptocurrency provide means of hiding funds from the public or close associates who may not be familiar with the technology. The rise of cryptocurrency has also led to spouses hiding digital assets during divorce settlements. This study presents a use case of a couple in the midst of a divorce where one of the spouses was accused of perjury for failure to declare bitcoin holdings, obtained via Bitcoin mining, and possibly other forms of cryptocurrency and digital assets to the court. The plaintiff is entitled to fifty percent of all assets. While property, stocks, bonds, and bank accounts can easily be traced, cryptocurrency assets are more complex to trace but it is not impossible. This paper illustrates how such a case can be investigated by following the flow of funds on the blockchain, using tools such as Maltego and QLUE. The paper thus presents an investigative process that can be followed for a new category of forensic investigation.
Cryptocurrency is a new thing that descended on this world, as it began to be very popular and in demand. It has been circulated among societies since the past year or shortly before, although its establishment was announced in 2009 by an unknown party that called itself “Satoshi Nakamoto”. The research problem lies in the emergence of these encrypted digital currencies the profit seekers hasten to acquire, promote, and sell them. The research attempts to answer six questions; Including: What is the truth about encrypted digital currencies? What is the current jurisprudential adaptation to it? This research aims to highlight its reality, the history of its emergence, its characteristics, and the provisions for dealing with it. on the descriptive analytical approach as well as the historical approach, and this research contains six demands; The first: what are the encrypted digital currencies, the second: is the importance of currencies in human life, the third: is the history of the emergence of encrypted digital currencies, the fourth: jurisprudential controls for the issuance of currencies, and the fifth: the characteristics of encrypted digital currencies. Sixth: the ruling on buying and selling digital currencies coded and, dealing with it, and these demands followed a conclusion that included its results, the most important of which are: currencies are the sovereign function of states, and encrypted digital currencies without state recognition is not valid relying on it because of the deception and dangers it entails, and Islam forbids that, and this ruling will be removed the adoption of countries for it, or at least the country of origin, and if its finances disappear, it is not correct to deal with it where it is correct dealing in paper currencies, and if its finance is proven, it is correct to deal with it, as it is correct to deal in paper currencies.
Due to the rapid advancement of cyber technology, virtual property is becoming more susceptible to hostile activity. Security structures that are mostly built on block chains (BCSSs) have gained traction. Disbursed ledger structures protected by encryption and consensus procedures are checked by BCSSs to protect industries against cyber attacks, data loss, and unwanted access. They provide users with a distributed ledger machine that is encrypted, shared, and may be used to manage virtual risks and digital property. It follows objectives to investigate how BCSSs affect cyber security. One way to perform a qualitative synthesis of the literature is to examine and analyze relevant academic materials and publications that discuss the challenges and advantages faced by BCSSs in the field of cyber security. The evaluation's findings will help determine the overall effect of BCSS on cyber security and offer recommendations for BCSS setups that will improve cyber security defense. To identify gaps in current cyber security measures, all findings will be compared with existing studies. It will provide invaluable analysis and insights into how best to use BCSSs for increased cyber security in comparison to traditional security architectures. When enforcing BCSSs, it will also recognize remarkable practices and tactics for businesses and professional clients.
P. Maragathavalli, Aravindhar RS, R Keerthana, M. Harini · 5 authors
Cybercrime gives challenges to law enforcement agencies to secure digital evidence and maintain its integrity. Blockchain known for its decentralized and immutable nature, provides a secure ledger to record digital evidence transactions restricting unauthorized access. This project proposes a framework for digital forensic evidence management, contributing to the enhancement of security and reliability in digital forensic practices through the utilization of Ethereum Blockchain technology and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption. Through a systematic review, various studies, methodologies, and implementations employing Blockchain to safeguard digital evidence are explored. Blockchain, known for its decentralized and immutable nature, provides a secure ledger to record digital evidence transactions, restricting unauthorized access. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm ensures that the data stored on the blockchain remains tamper-resistant and secure. In the blockchain ecosystem, Proof of Stake (POS) plays a critical role by facilitating transaction validation and block creation. It distinguishes itself by selecting validators based on the amount of cryptocurrency they 'stake' or pledge as collateral, offering an energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable alternative to the traditional method.
Munir Ahmad, Muhammad Idrees, Muhammad Saleem Qazi
Cryptocurrencies have become a preferred mode of terror financing. it is imperative to analyze the role of cryptocurrencies in empowering terrorist organizations especially in developing states. It takes on a more serious form in developing countries like Pakistan, which is fighting a battle against terrorism for the last few decades. Now digital financing has become an undeniable reality of the modern world, it is essential to devise a comprehensive strategy for breaking the nexus between terrorism and cryptocurrencies. This article intends to explore the answers to the questions that why cryptocurrencies are becoming a preferred mode for terror financing. It argues that the anonymity, decentralization and operational ease of cryptocurrencies make them a preferred medium for terrorist organizations. Therefore, enhancing institutional capacity by training human resources and making dedicated efforts at the national level will prove to be instrumental in delinking terrorism and cryptocurrencies. Moreover, close collaboration between international watchdogs and national institutions is essential in mitigating the threat of the use of cryptocurrencies for terrorism.
Collaborative cybersecurity relies on organizations sharing information to boost security, but trust management is a key concern. Decentralized solutions like distributed ledgers, particularly blockchain, are crucial for eliminating single points of failure. However, the existing literature on blockchain-based collaborative cybersecurity is limited, lacking comprehensive insights. This paper addresses this gap by surveying blockchain's role in collaborative cybersecurity from 2016 to 2023. It explores various applications, trends, and the evolution of blockchain technology, focusing on access control, data validation policies, underlying tech, and consensus mechanisms. A key finding is the fragmentation of the field with no dominant research group or venue. Many recent projects poorly select consensus protocols for their blockchain. To aid researchers and practitioners, this paper offers guidelines for choosing the right blockchain for specific purposes and highlights open research areas and lessons learned from past blockchain applications in collaborative cybersecurity, encouraging further exploration in this field.
Abstract This study focuses on the analysis of cryptocurrency regulatory developments in Europe. The aim is to review national crypto-legislation in Europe and the EU's latest initiative to create designated regulatory instruments for the crypto-economy. This study assessed whether the European Union's Regulation on Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) would have the intended effect. Drawing on the results of a survey of crypto experts from five European countries, this study evaluated the effectiveness of current regulation across Europe and how it can be improved to reduce financial crimes. The findings show that a unified national legal framework for regulating transactions with crypto assets does not exist in European countries. Current crypto regulations are dictated by anti-money laundering recommendations. This study provides suggestions for improving MiCA regulation. The article offers recommendations for an international regulatory standard for crypto assets and insights for increasing efficiency in regulating DeFi, NFTs, and smart contracts.
Decentralized finance, or DeFi, has become the dominating application category on public blockchains like Ethereum. DeFi allows users to lend, borrow, collateralize, and exchange using smart contracts for a cheap cost of trust, unlike traditional finance. However, DeFi's openness creates a large attack surface, threatening players' funds. This paper introduces BLOCKEYE, a real-time threat detection technology for Ethereum DeFi deployments. Two essential aspects of BLOCKEYE handle this challenge: (1) Automated security analysis identifies vulnerable DeFi projects. To detect external manipulation of essential service states like asset prices, this technique uses symbolic reasoning on their data flow. (2) Offchain transaction monitor for susceptible DeFi projects. This monitor captures transactions not only for the target project but also for associated projects, providing further security analysis. BLOCKEYE alerts you to potential attacks when it detects system invariants like quick and disproportionate benefit to cost. Successfully applying BLOCKEYE to prominent DeFi projects has revealed previously unreported security attacks. The system's real-time analysis and detection improves DeFi ecosystem security, protecting user funds and decentralized financial platforms.
Završni rad istražuje temu kriptovaluta, s posebnim naglaskom zakonski okvir i njihov utjecaj na hrvatsko gospodarstvo. Svrha i cilj istraživanja analizirati je postojeće zakonske okvire koji se odnose na kriptovalute u Hrvatskoj i usporediti ih s drugim zemljama te istražiti ekonomske koristi i rizike kriptovaluta u hrvatskom kontekstu. Dugi se niz godina u svijetu raspravlja o obveznicama i dionicama, no postale su nedovoljno inovativne. Umjesto samo proširenja, potrebna je preinaka kako bi im se vratio smisao. Ono što je zaintrigiralo svijet pojavilo se prije nekoliko godina te svojom pojavom na tržištu postavilo potpuno novi financijski svijet - kriptovalute. One su sa sobom dovele i mnogobrojna pitanja, a jedno od najčešćih je kako financijski gledati na njih. Kriptovalute su nova forma novca koja nije vezana za centralne banke već za decentralizirane sustave upravljanja, a tehnike bazirane na blockchainu utječu na sve dijelove društva. Kriptovalute su unatrag nekoliko godina imale snažan utjecaj na ekonomiju, ali i na pojam valute danas. U središtu rada zakonski je okvir kriptovaluta u Hrvatskoj. Analiziraju se postojeći zakoni i regulacije te se provodi usporedba s praksom drugih zemalja, uključujući Kanadu, Sjedinjene Američke Države, Europsku uniju i druge. Otkriveni izazovi s kojima se susreću hrvatski regulatori u regulaciji kriptovaluta dodatno doprinose razumijevanju situacije u Hrvatskoj.
Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) has become increasingly important in safeguarding organizations against cyber threats. However, managing, storing, analyzing, and sharing vast and sensitive threat intelligence data is a challenge. Blockchain technology, with its robust and tamper-resistant properties, offers a promising solution to address these challenges. This systematic literature review explores the recent advancements and emerging trends at the intersection of CTI and blockchain technology. We reviewed research papers published during the last 5 years to investigate the various proposals, methodologies, models, and implementations related to the distributed ledger technology and how this technology can be used to collect, store, analyze, and share CTI in a secured and controlled manner, as well as how this combination can further support additional dimensions such as quality assurance, reputation, and trust. Our findings highlight the focus of the CTI and blockchain convergence on the dissemination phase in the CTI lifecycle, reflecting a substantial emphasis on optimizing the efficacy of communication and sharing mechanisms, based on an equitable emphasis on both permissioned, private blockchains and permissionless, public blockchains, addressing the diverse requirements and preferences within the CTI community. The analysis reveals a focus towards the tactical and technical dimensions of CTI, compared to the operational and strategic CTI levels, indicating an emphasis on more technical-oriented utilization within the domain of blockchain technology. The technological landscape supporting CTI and blockchain integration emerges as multifaceted, featuring pivotal roles played by smart contracts, machine learning, federated learning, consensus algorithms, IPFS, deep learning, and encryption. This integration of diverse technologies contributes to the robustness and adaptability of the proposed frameworks. Moreover, our exploration unveils the overarching significance of trust and privacy as predominant themes, underscoring their pivotal roles in shaping the landscape within our research realm. Additionally, our study addresses the maturity assessment of these integrated systems. The approach taken in evaluating maturity levels, distributed across the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale, reveals an average balance, indicating that research efforts span from early to mid-stages of maturity in implementation. This study signifies the ongoing evolution and maturation of research endeavors within the dynamic intersection of CTI and blockchain technology, identifies trends, and also highlights research gaps that can potentially be addressed by future research on the field.