Maya Dotan, Yvonne-Anne Pignolet, Stefan Schmid, Saar Tochner · 5 authors
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are realized using distributed systems and hence critically rely on the performance and security of the interconnecting network. The requirements on these networks and their usage, however can differ significantly from traditional communication networks, with implications on all layers of the protocol stack. This paper is motivated by these differences, and in particular by the observation that many fundamental design aspects of these networks are not well-understood today. In order to support the networking community to contribute to this emerging application domain, we present a structured overview of the field, from topology and neighbor discovery to block and transaction propagation. In particular, we provide the context, highlighting differences and commonalities with traditional networks, review the state-of-the-art, and identify open research challenges. Our paper can hence also be seen as a call-to-arms to improve the foundation on top of which cryptocurrencies are built.
Rakesh Shrestha, Seung Yeob Nam, Rojeena Bajracharya, Shiho Kim
With the rapid evolution in wireless communications and autonomous vehicles, intelligent and autonomous vehicles will be launched soon. Vehicle to Everything (V2X) communications provides driving safety, traffic efficiency, and road information in real-time in vehicular networks. V2X has evolved by integrating cellular 5G and New Radio (NR) access technology in V2X communications (i.e., 5G NR V2X); it can fulfill the ever-evolving vehicular application, communication, and service demands of connected vehicles, such as ultra-low latency, ultra-high bandwidth, ultra-high reliability, and security. However, with the increasing number of intelligent and autonomous vehicles and their safety requirements, there is a backlash in deployment and management because of scalability, poor security and less flexibility. Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) plays a significant role in bringing cloud services closer to vehicular nodes, which reduces the scalability and flexibility issues. In addition, blockchain has evolved as an effective technology enabler to solve several security, privacy, and networking issues faced by the current 5G-based MEC systems in vehicular networks. Blockchain can be integrated as a strong security mechanism for securing and managing 5G V2X along with MEC. In this survey, we discuss, in detail, state-of-the-art V2X, its evolution based on cellular 5G technology and non-cellular 802.11bd. We investigate the integration of blockchain in 5G-based MEC vehicular networks for security, privacy protection, and content caching. We present the issues and challenges in existing edge computing and 5G V2X and, then, we shed some light on future research directions in these integrated and emerging technologies.
Juan Velandia Botello, Andrés Pardo Mesa, Fabián Ardila Rodríguez, Daniel Díaz López · 6 authors
The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has revolutionized several industries (e.g., manufacturing, health, transport, education, among others) by allowing objects to connect to the Internet and, thus, enabling a variety of novel applications. In this sense, IoT devices have become an essential component of smart cities, allowing many novel and useful services, but, at the same time, bringing numerous cybersecurity threats. The paper at hand proposes BlockSIEM, a blockchain-based and distributed Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution framework for the protection of the aforementioned smart city services. The proposed SIEM relies on blockchain technology to securely store and access security events. Such security events are generated by IoT sentinels that are in charge of shielding groups of IoT devices. The IoT sentinels may be deployed in smart city scenarios, such as smart hospitals, smart transport systems, smart airports, among others, ensuring a satisfactory level of protection. The blockchain guarantees the non-repudiation and traceability of the registry of security events due to its features. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, our proposal is implemented using Ethereum and validated through different use cases and experiments.
Jiejun Hu, Martin J. Reed, Nikolaos Thomos, Mays F. AI-Naday · 5 authors
The Internet of Things (IoT) connected by software-defined networking (SDN) promises to bring great benefits to cyber-physical systems. However, the increased attack surface offered by the growing number of connected vulnerable devices and separation of SDN control and data planes could overturn the huge benefits of such a system. This article addresses the vulnerability of the trust relationship between the control and data planes. To meet this aim, we propose an edge computing-based Blockchain as a Service (BaaS), enabled by an external BaaS provider. The proposed solution provides verification of inserted flows through an efficient, edge-distributed, blockchain solution. We study two scenarios for the blockchain reward purpose: 1) information symmetry, in which the SDN operator has direct knowledge of the real effort spent by the BaaS provider and 2) information asymmetry, in which the BaaS provider controls the exposure of information regarding spent effort. The latter yields the so-called “moral hazard,” where the BaaS may claim higher than actual effort. We develop a novel mathematical model of the edge BaaS solution and propose an innovative algorithm of a fair reward scheme based on game theory that takes into account moral hazard. We evaluate the viability of our solution through analytical simulations. The results demonstrate the ability of the proposed algorithm to maximize the joint profits of the BaaS and SDN operator, i.e., maximizing the social welfare.
A blockchain is a new open-source technology who attract whole the business world and technology experts to research, to explore and to understand the potential of this technology in different areas. Blockchain initially released in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto as a fundamental technology for the first-ever global decentralized cryptography-based digital currency known as BITCOIN. A blockchain is a transparent and immutable globally distributed ledger, distributed databases, who have global agreement by all its users. It means that when anything written in distributed ledger is cannot be cheated and modified, it will be trusted if the writer of content is trusted. In this research studies, author analyzes the performance of two widely used blockchain platform one is Ethereum and second is Hyperledger Fabric.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Voltage controls the majority of the processes around us, starting from lighting an incandescent lamp to running huge machines in industries. Therefore, voltage monitoring becomes essential, which demands efficient measurement and storage of voltage data. However, there is hardly any system till date that fulfils both the goals of voltage monitoring and voltage data storage. To achieve this goal, we propose the application of the Internet of Things along with the server-based framework and Distributed Ledger Technology to build systems for smart voltage monitoring. Two models - a centralised model and a decentralised model have been presented and analysed thoroughly in this paper. The centralised model is built on client-server architecture, whereas the decentralised model is based on a peer-to-peer architecture. Blockchain and InterPlanetary File System have been used for the implementation of the decentralised system. Potential improvements to make these systems robust have also been discussed. The methods proposed in this paper for voltage monitoring are novel; ensure efficient data storage and can be used for IoT data storage of any form.
Today, people are going to senior managers in almost all industries pitching about their “I have a new product” thing. Disruptive technology transforms a differentiated product that was so expensive and sometimes complicated or sophisticated into a simplified implementation with the applicability of APIs. APIs provide a platform where startup companies can be nitrated to a giant and established companies. Secondly, it changes the business ecosystem to suit all kinds of players small or big. In previous years, only major companies with a lot of resources had access to such technologies. This selfish access to new technologies would make such giants flourish like Amazon, eBay, Google. Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology gaining significant research devotion in numerous areas cutting across e-commerce, cryptocurrency, cryptography, logistics, security, finance, and now it is gaining grounds in e-commerce, big data, and internet of things. This chapter introduces the concept of blockchain, applications, and benefits it possesses in various fields related to e-commerce.
In the era of ubiquitous intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT) holds the promise as a breakthrough technology to enable diverse applications that benefit societal problems. Yet interconnecting myriad heterogeneous IoT devices across various application domains remain a security challenge. Decentralized technology has recently emerged as a powerful primitive in building distributed applications to facilitate secure transactions between mutually distrustful parties in a trustworthy manner. Unfortunately, these decentralized protocols demand computing resources and power far beyond the reach of resource-constrained IoT devices, preventing the full adoption of distributed consensus platform in the IoT setting. In this article, we address the key bottleneck to enable blockchain in resource-constrained IoT devices. We propose a lightweight implementation of proof-of-work (PoW) mining with reconfigurable hardware primitives. By replacing the hash and cryptographic functions in classic blockchain protocol with secure and efficient hardware implementations, our proposed solution can significantly reduce hardware resources and power overheads of PoW mining, while improving the transaction speed of large-scale IoT systems. Finally, we demonstrate the algorithm by proposing an antispoofing solution for GPS navigation among lightweight IoT devices. As a replacement for position computation, a mining process generates the expected coordinates with the correct initial value and function configuration.
The combination of pervasive edge computing and blockchain technologies opens up significant possibilities for industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications, but there are several critical limitations regarding efficient storage and rapid response for large-scale low-delay IIoT scenarios. To address these limitations, in this article we propose a hierarchical edge-cloud blockchain called LayerChain. Specifically, to promote scalability, we design a layered structure to hierarchically store the blockchain data in multiple distributed clouds and edge nodes. Next, we propose a node classification method to accommodate differences between the edge nodes when deploying the blockchain. Moreover, to mitigate lengthy delays during block propagation, we propose a tree-based clustering algorithm where blocks are propagated through different clusters with a compressed tree depth. Simulation results show that our LayerChain efficiently reduces the system's resource requirements and block propagation time, making it well-suited for large-scale low-delay IIoT applications.
Amjad Saeed Khan, Xinruo Zhang, Sangarapillai Lambotharan, Gan Zheng · 6 authors
Inspired by its success in financial sectors, the blockchain technique is emerging as an enabling technology for secure distributed control and management of wireless networks. In order to fully benefit from this distributed ledger technology, its limitations, cost, complexity and empowerment also have to be critically appraised. Depending on the specific context of the problem to be solved, these limitations have been handled to some extent through a clear dichotomy in the blockchain architectures, namely by conceiving both permissioned and permissionless blockchains. Permissionless blockchain requires massive computing power to achieve consensus, while its permissioned counterpart is energy efficient but would require trusted participants. To combine these benefits by gaining trust at a high energy efficiency, a novel mechanism is proposed for automatically learning the trust level of users in a public blockchain network and granting them access to a private blockchain network. In this context, machine learning is a very powerful tool capable of automatically learning the trust level. We have proposed reinforcement learning for bridging the dichotomy of blockchains in terms of striking a trust vs complexity trade-off in an unknown environment. Benefits and limitations of various forms of blockchain techniques are analyzed, followed by their reinforcement-aided evolution. We demonstrate that the proposed reinforcement learning aided blockchain is capable of supporting high-integrity autonomous operation and decision making in wireless networks. The win-win amalgamation of these techniques has been demonstrated for striking a compelling balance between the benefits of permissioned and permissionless blockchain networks through the case-study of the proposed blockchain based unmanned aerial vehicle aided wireless networks.
Rapid development in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), Internet of Things (IoT), and Big Data (BD) analytics has revolutionized the manufacturing industry, which introduces the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in Industry 4.0. IIoT includes machinery, manufacturing processes, and automation mechanisms. The existing IIoT system uses a centralized architecture, where the trusted third party (TTP) performs transactions, which raises security and privacy concerns and may have a single point of failure. The emerging technology Blockchain is a prominent solution to address the aforementioned issues. Motivated by these facts, in this article we highlight the issues of data dissemination in the IIoT environment and present a blockchain-based decentralized model for IIoT (DMIIoT). The proposed model uses a secure Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network, where each node interacts with other nodes. Then we highlight the potential of the DMIIoT to improve various services in IIoT, such as better production visibility and Quality of Service (QoS). Finally, we present a case study on a Smart Grid (SG) system to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed model with data load balance, energy management costs, and transmission delay parameters.
Gerardo Canfora, Andrea Di Sorbo, Sonia Laudanna, Anna Vacca · 5 authors
Nowadays, blockchain technologies are increasingly adopted for different purposes and in different application domains. Accordingly, more and more applications are developed for running on a distributed ledger technology (i.e., \textit{dApps}). The business logic of a dApp (or part of it) is usually implemented within one (or more) smart contract(s) developed through Solidity, an object-oriented programming language for writing smart contracts on different blockchain platforms, including the popular Ethereum. In Ethereum, once compiled, the smart contracts run on the machines of miners who can earn Ethers (a cryptographic currency like Bitcoin) by contributing their computing resources and the \textit{gas} (in Ether) corresponds to the execution fee compensating such computing resources. However, the deployment and execution costs of a smart contract strictly depend on the choices done by developers while implementing it. Unappropriated design choices -- e.g., in the data structures and the specific instructions used -- could lead to higher gas consumption than necessary. In this paper, we systematically identify a set of 20 Solidity code smells that could affect the deployment and transaction costs of a smart contract, i.e., \textit{cost smells}. On top of these smells, we propose GasMet, a suite of metrics for statically evaluating the code quality of a smart contract, from the gas consumption perspective. In an experiment involving 2,186 real-world smart contracts, we demonstrate that the proposed metrics (i) have direct associations with deployment costs, and (ii) they could be used to properly identify the level of gas consumption of a smart contract without the need for deploying it.
This paper proposes an architecture and a protocol suite for a permissioned blockchain for a local IoT network. The architecture is based on a sealed Sequencer and a Fog Server running (post-quantum) Guy Fawkes protocols. The blocks of the blockchain are stored in networked Content Addressable Storage alongside any user data and validity proofs. We maintain that a typical IoT device can, despite its resource limitations, use our blockchain protocols directly, without a trusted intermediary. This includes posting and monitoring transactions as well as off-chain (post-quantum) emergency communications without an explicit public key. Keywords: blockchain, Guy Fawkes protocol, post-quantum, HORS-OTS, LoRa, concurrent transmission
As a future energy system, the smart grid is designed to improve the efficiency of traditional power systems while providing more stable and reliable services. However, this efficient and reliable service relies on collecting and analyzing users’ electricity consumption data frequently, which induces various security and privacy threats. To address these challenges, we propose a double-blockchain assisted secure and anonymous data aggregation scheme for fog-enabled smart grid named DA-SADA. Specifically, we design a three-tier architecture-based data aggregation framework by integrating fog computing and the blockchain, which provides strong support for achieving efficient and secure data collection in smart grids. Subsequently, we develop a secure and anonymous data aggregation mechanism with low computational overhead by jointly leveraging the Paillier encryption, batch aggregation signature and anonymous authentication. In particular, the system achieves fine-grained data aggregation and provides effective support for power dispatching and price adjustment by the designed double-blockchain and two-level data aggregation. Finally, the superiority of the proposed scheme is illustrated by a series of security and computation cost analyses.
Emerging technologies, such as mobile-edge computing (MEC) and next-generation communications are crucial for enabling rapid development and deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT). With the increasing scale of IoT networks, how to optimize the network and allocate the limited resources to provide high-quality services remains a major concern. The existing work in this direction mainly relies on models that are of less practical value for resource-limited IoT networks, and can hardly simulate the dynamic systems in real time. In this article, we integrate digital twins with edge networks and propose the digital twin edge networks (DITENs) to fill the gap between physical edge networks and digital systems. Then, we propose a blockchain-empowered federated learning scheme to strengthen communication security and data privacy protection in DITEN. Furthermore, to improve the efficiency of the integrated scheme, we propose an asynchronous aggregation scheme and use digital twin empowered reinforcement learning to schedule relaying users and allocate spectrum resources. Theoretical analysis and numerical results confirm that the proposed scheme can considerably enhance both communication efficiency and data security for IoT applications.
Medical delivery drones are gradually becoming an inseparable part of smart human society, especially with the emergence of 5G and existing internet of things (IoT). A wide range of medical facilities can be leveraged via drone-based delivery aspects. Being a nascent stage of development, this field of application faces significant drawbacks from reliable and secure e-healthcare. In this paper, we discuss the importance of blockchain to improve decentralization, privacy, and consensus-aware medical product delivery by the drones. We firstly review the background of blockchain, 5G-IoT ecosystem and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Secondly, we review existing UAVs capable of performing medial delivery. We also find whether such drones are technically viable to work accordance to the 5GIoT era. Thirdly, we propose a modified multi-modal aspect behind medical delivery drones under the 5G-IoT assisted blockchain ecosystem. Fourthly, we propose an architecture comprising 5G, IoT, blockchain, and medical delivery drones with extraterrestrial communication support from satellites. Lastly, we discuss key open research challenges and provide a future road map.
Bitcoin system (or Bitcoin) is a peer-to-peer and decentralized payment system that uses cryptocurrency named bitcoins (BTCs) and was released as open-source software in 2009. Bitcoin platform has attracted both social and anti-social elements. On the one hand, it is social as it ensures the exchange of value, maintaining trust in a cooperative, community-driven manner without the need for a trusted third party. At the same time, it is anti-social as it creates hurdles for law enforcement to trace suspicious transactions due to anonymity and privacy. To understand how the social and anti-social tendencies in the user base of Bitcoin affect its evolution, there is a need to analyze the Bitcoin system as a network. The current paper aims to explore the local topology and geometry of the Bitcoin network during its first decade of existence. Bitcoin transaction data from 01 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT to 08 May 2020 13:21:33 GMT was processed for this purpose to build a Bitcoin user graph.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques