Recently, the interest around the Blockchain concept has grown faster and, as a consequence, several studies about the possibility of exploiting such technology in different application domains have been conducted. Most of these studies highlighted the benefits that the use of the blockchain could bring in those contexts where integrity and authenticity of the data are important, e.g., for reasons linked to regulations about consumers’ healthcare. In such cases, it would be important to collect data, coming in real-time through sensors, and then store them in the blockchain, so that they can become immutable and tamper-proof. In this paper, the design and development of a software framework that allows Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices to interact directly with an Ethereum-based blockchain are reported. The proposed solution represents an alternative way for integrating a wide category of IoT devices without relying on a centralized intermediary and third-party services. The main application scenario for which the project has been conceived regards food-chain traceability in the Industry 4.0 domain. Indeed, the designed system has been integrated into the depiction of a use case for monitoring the temperature of fish products within a warehouse and during the delivery process.
This article proposes a new data management platform using blockchain that contributes to verify the integrity of the real-world data obtained from the IoT (Internet of Things) devices (e.g., camera, smart meter, smartphone) deployed on the real world. The existing blockchain-based platform guarantees the integrity of only the data registered inside the blockchain but does not detect the situation that the data is tampered and/or spoofed outside the blockchain. The proposed platform is designed based on the characteristic of the IoT system that the real-world data is continuously generated from the origin IoT device and there may exist various sensing devices (e.g., smartphone, sensor node) in the vicinity of the origin device. In the integrity verification mechanism, the origin device requests the surrounding devices to cooperate to verify the integrity of the real-world data. The tendency of the real-world data of the origin device should be almost the same as the data generated by the cooperator devices if the data tampering/spoofing did not occur. Therefore, by comparing the real-world data generated by the origin and the cooperator devices on the blockchain, the proposed platform verifies the integrity of the real-world data on the whole part of the IoT system.
Increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies lead to the rapid development of blockchain-based distributed ledger keeping systems. Industrial applications for the new technologies were soon found, enhanced by needs of security, trust and transparency along the value-chain in traceability of products, parts and processes, particularly when transactions are being maintained through several different entities. Traceability solutions are also increasingly being built upon IoT or IIoT platforms. Although this allows for highly modular and flexible architectures, severe security deficiencies make these designs inapplicable to most real-life production lines. Lack of research and practical advances in the creation of modular and easily deployable frameworks motivated development of the project underlying this dissertation.
As the core of blockchain technology, the consensus algorithm plays an important role in determining the security, data consistency, and efficiency of blockchain systems. The existing mainstream consensus algorithm is experiencing difficulties satisfying the needs of efficiency, security, and decentralization in real-world scenarios. This paper proposes a hybrid consensus algorithm based on modified Proof-of-Probability and Delegated Proof-of-Stake. In this method, the work of block generation and validation is, respectively, completed by the nodes using the modified Proof-of-Probability consensus algorithm and Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm. When a transaction occurs, the system sends several target hash values to the whole network. Each modified Proof-of-Probability node has a different sorting algorithm, so they have different mining priorities. Every time a hash is decrypted by a modified Proof-of-Probability node, the modulo operation is done to the value of nonce, which is then compared with the expected value given by the supernode selected by the Delegated Proof-of-Stake nodes. If they are not the same, the Proof-of-Probability node enters the waiting time and the other Proof-of-Probability nodes continue to mine. By adopting two consensus algorithms, the malicious nodes must control more than 51% of the nodes that adopt the two consensus algorithms, at the same time, to effectively attack the system, that is, they must have more than 51% of the computing power and more than 51% of the tokens. This not only increases the cost of malicious attacks, but also reduces waste of computing power. In addition, the efficiency of the DPoS algorithm makes up for the deficiency of the PoP algorithm in system efficiency, and the mining behavior based on probability in the PoP algorithm also significantly weakens the ability of supernodes in the DPoS algorithm to conduct monopoly behavior or other malicious behaviors. In a word, the combination of the two algorithms makes the system perform better in terms of security, system efficiency, and decentralization.
Martín Garriga, Stefano Dalla Palma, Maxmiliano Arias, Alan De Renzis · 6 authors
Abstract Blockchain is a decentralized transaction and data management solution, the technological leap behind the success of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. As the variety of existing blockchains and distributed ledgers continues to increase, adopters should focus on selecting the solution that best fits their needs and the requirements of their decentralized applications, rather than developing yet another blockchain from scratch. In this article we present a conceptual framework to aid software architects, developers, and decision makers to adopt the right blockchain technology. The framework exposes the interrelation between technological decisions and architectural features, capturing the knowledge from existing academic literature, industrial products, technical forums/blogs, and experts' feedback. We empirically show the applicability of our framework by dissecting the platforms behind Bitcoin and other top 10 cryptocurrencies, aided by a focus group with researchers and industry practitioners. Then, we leverage the framework together with key notions of the architectural tradeoff analysis method to analyze four real‐world blockchain case studies from industry and academia. Results shown that applying our framework leads to a deeper understanding of the architectural tradeoffs, allowing to assess technologies more objectively and select the one that best fit developers' needs, ultimately cutting costs, reducing time‐to‐market and accelerating return on investment.
Geetanjali Rathee, Farhan Ahmad, Fatih Kurugöllü, Muhammad Ajmal Azad · 6 authors
Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) is considered as a viable solution on Internet of Vehicle (IoV) where objects equipped with cognition make decisions intelligently through the understanding of both social and physical worlds. However, the spectrum availability and data sharing/transferring among vehicles are critical improving services and driving safety metrics where the presence of Malicious Devices (MD) further degrade the network performance. Recently, a blockchain technique in CRN-based IoV has been introduced to prevent data alteration from these MD and allowing the vehicles to track both legal and illegal activities in the network. In this paper, we provide the security to IoV during spectrum sensing and information transmission using CRN by sensing the channels through a decision-making technique known as Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), a technique that evokes the trust of its Cognitive Users (CU) by analyzing certain predefined attributes. Further, blockchain is maintained in the network to trace every activity of stored information. The proposed mechanism is validated rigorously against several security metrics using various spectrum sensing and security parameters against a baseline solution in IoV. Extensive simulations suggest that our proposed mechanism is approximately 70% more efficient in terms of malicious nodes identification and DoS threat against the baseline mechanism.
Electronic health records (EHRs) have become a popular method to store and manage patients’ data in hospitals. Sharing these records makes the current healthcare data management system more accurate and cost-efficient. Currently, EHRs are stored using the client/server architecture by which each hospital retains the stewardship of the patients’ data. The records of a patient are scattered among different hospitals using heterogeneous database servers. These limitations constitute a burden towards a personalized healthcare, when it comes to offering a cohesive view and a shared, secure and private access to patients’ health history for multiple allied professionals and the patients. The data availability, privacy and security characteristics of the blockchain have a propitious future in the healthcare presenting solutions to the complexity, confidentiality, integrity, interoperability and privacy issues of the current client/server architecture-based EHR management system. This paper analyzes and compares the performance of the blockchain and the client/server paradigms. The results reveal that notable performance can be achieved using blockchain in a patient-centric approach. In addition, the immutable and valid patients’ data in the blockchain can aid allied health professionals in better prognosis and diagnosis support through machine learning and artificial intelligence.
The objective of this research is to present the use of blockchain technology, the internet of things and fog computing to develop the potential of school management for smart education. By using the blockchain to record and store various pieces of information the organization will create credibility of administrative data in all departments and will reduce corruption. Data can be examined transparently, especially the financial and budget management and procurement of durable articles. Regarding the academic work and registration, it can be used to store learners' information, educational history, information of enrollment, academic results, and participation in the various activities of the educational institutions. It can create credibility in the management of information about content, learning and ability assessment results that students receive, and these can be recorded and stored in a blockchain that can be safely distributed. In addition, IoT and fog computing are integrated with AI systems embedded in various modern devices to be applied in environmental management and smart education management. IoT and fog computing help to support and respond quickly to questions about the use of all types of equipment for real-time management of executives, personnel and students, as well as creating new work and learning styles that can solve the situation of dangerous communicable diseases, such as the COVID-19 situation, or can solve emergency situations that will emerge in the future by working and studying from home. It can organize and share resources for work and learning together to access the organization from outside anywhere and at any time
Recently, blockchain has elicited escalating attention from academia to industry. However, blockchain is still in its initial stage, and remains a great number of non-trivial problems to be delved before being used as a generic platform. The most intractable one is the scalability problem. The deep reinforcement learning empowered adaptivity can help the blockchain network break through the bottleneck. In this paper, we study a deep reinforcement learning empowered adaptivity approach for future blockchain networks, so as to improve the scalability and meet the requirements of different users. Specifically, rather than using one consensus protocol as the best fit one, the blockchain networks launch different consensus protocols, based on users’ quality of service (QoS) requirements. To this end, we quantify four consensus protocols. Additionally, the blockchain networks are heavily hampered by the limited computation and bandwidth resources. We also dynamically allocate computation and bandwidth resources to the blockchain networks. Then we formulate these thress items, i.e., the selection of consensus protocols, computation resource, and network bandwidth resource, as a joint optimization problem. A deep reinforcement learning approach is used to solve this problem. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of our proposed scheme.
Vehicular fog computing has emerged as a complementary framework for edge computing by leveraging the under-utilized computational resources of vehicles. However, how to reduce task offloading delay, queuing delay, and handover cost with incomplete information while simultaneously ensuring privacy, fairness, and security remains an open issue. In this paper, we develop a secure and intelligent task offloading framework to address these challenges. We exploit blockchain and smart contract to facilitate fair task offloading and mitigate various security attacks. Then, we design a subjective logic-based trustfulness metric to quantify the possibility of task offloading success, and develop a trustfulness assessment mechanism. An online learning-based intelligent task offloading algorithm named QUeuing-delay aware, handOver-cost aware, and Trustfulness Aware Upper Confidence Bound (QUOTA-UCB) is proposed, which can learn the long-term optimal strategy and achieve a well-balanced tradeoff among task offloading delay, queuing delay, and handover cost. Finally, extensive theoretical analysis and simulations are carried out to demonstrate the reliability, feasibility, and efficiency of the proposed secure and intelligent task offloading scheme.
COVID-19 is a severe global epidemic in human history. Even though there are particular medications and vaccines to curb the epidemic, tracing and isolating the infection source is the best option to slow the virus spread and reduce infection and death rates. There are three disadvantages to the existing contact tracing system: 1. User data is stored in a centralized database that could be stolen and tampered with, 2. User’s confidential personal identity may be revealed to a third party or organization, 3. Existing contact tracing systems [1][2] only focus on information sharing from one dimension, such as location-based tracing, which significantly limits the effectiveness of such systems.We propose a global COVID-19 information sharing and risk notification system that utilizes the Blockchain, Smart Contract, and Bluetooth. To protect user privacy, we design a novel Blockchain-based platform that can share consistent and non-tampered contact tracing information from multiple dimensions, such as location-based for indirect contact and Bluetooth-based for direct contact. Hierarchical smart contract architecture is also designed to achieve global agreements from users about how to process and utilize user data, thereby enhancing the data usage transparency. Furthermore, we propose a mechanism to protect user identity privacy from multiple aspects. More importantly, our system can notify the users about the exposure risk via smart contracts. We implement a prototype system to conduct extensive measurements to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our system.
In the next few years, Blockchain will playa central role in IoT as a technology. It enables the traceability of processes between multiple parties independent of a central instance. Blockchain allows to make the processes more transparent, cheaper, and safer. This research paper was conducted as systematic literature search. Our aim is to understand current state of implementation in context of Blockchain Technology for digital protection of communication in industrial cyber-physical systems. We have extracted 28 primary papers from scientific databases and classified into different categories using visualizations. The results show that the focus in around 14% papers is on solution proposal and implementation of use cases Secure transfer of order data using Ethereum Blockchain, 7% papers applying Hyperledger Fabric and Multichain. The majority of research (around 43%) is focusing on solution development for supply chain and process traceability.
With the growth of Internet of Things (IoT), users develop many different IoT applications in web cloud platforms. However, cloud-based web services do not usually apply to the constrained networks because of HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). In addition, distributed mechanisms to achieve identity authentication or data confidentiality are becoming more and more important when the number of devices located in IoT networks increases. The paper proposes the IoT Framework based on IoTtalk. IoTtalk is a web platform for users to quickly develop IoT applications. To enhance the applicability of IoTtalk in IoT networks and support identity authentication as well as data confidentiality, we introduce CoAP-based IoT Proxy and smart contract-based IoT Chain respectively. The IoT Proxy promotes the applicability of IoTtalk in IoT networks through the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP). The IoT Chain provides identity authentication as well as data confidentiality to IoTtalk through the blockchain and the smart contract. Our experiments show that the IoT Framework promotes the security of the IoTtalk and keeps the performance of IoTtalk.
Abstract In modern cities, smart irrigation systems are designed to operate via Internet of things (IoT) based sensor units having precise measurements of irrigation requirements such as amount of water, crop temperature, and humidity to build a robust supply chain ecosystem. The usage of sensors and networking units enable the optimal usage of irrigation resources, and is termed as precision irrigation (PI). Thus, PI leverage an efficient solution to handle the scarcity of essential resources such as food, water, land units, and crop yields. Thus, farmers gets better returns in the market due to high production. However, in PI, the exchange of crop readings from sensor units to actuators are processed through open channels, that is, Internet. Thus, it open the doors for malicious intruders to deploy network and sensor‐based attacks on PI‐sensors, to drain the available resources, and battery power of sensor nodes in the network. This reduces the optimum and precise utilization of irrigation resources, low‐yield crops and damaged crops in supply chain systems. This leads to dissatisfaction among agriculture stakeholders such as quality control units, logistics, suppliers, and customers. Motivated from the above discussions, the survey presents the advantages of integrating blockchain (BC) with PI to handle issues pertaining to security, trust, and transactional payments among agriculture stakeholders. The survey is directed to achieve threefold objective‐ attack models and countermeasures in PI systems, integration of BC in PI to mitigate attack models, and research challenges in deploying BC in PI. To address the first objective, the survey proposes an in‐depth comparative analysis of traditional irrigation systems with PI, with discussions on attack models. To address the second objective, the survey proposes an integration model of BC with PI to secure IoT sensors, and maintain trust and transparency among stakeholders. Finally, the survey addresses the open research challenges of deploying BC in PI‐based irrigation systems, and presents a case‐study of AgriChain as an industry ready‐solution that envisions BC with PI ecosystem. Thus, the proposed survey acts as a roadmap for agriculture industry stakeholders, researchers, to deploy BC in IoT‐based PI that leverages an efficient, robust, trust‐worthy, and secure ecosystem.
Blockchain is defined as a distributed database that gives a secure, yet transparent way to make, record, and validate any kind of transaction record. Blockchain helps in eliminating the necessity of a centralized control and the transactions are digitally signed with the help of an asset owner public/private key pair. In addition, once the transactions are recorded, data in a block cannot be modified/altered/deleted retrospectively. In this chapter, we first discuss blockchain technology design space and its various consensus mechanisms. We then discuss various practical applications related to blockchain. Next, we also discuss various advantages and disadvantages of blockchain including limitations. After that, we emphasize on authentication protocols that are needed in blockchain to provide stronger security as compared to traditional authentication mechanisms and perform a comparative study on various existing lightweight authentication protocols that are applicable in blockchain technology. Finally, we discuss various testbeds that are deployed and implemented for blockchain technology.
Internet of Things (IoT) has transformed the network into a new pathway by connecting the surrounding smart objects to enable smart services that act spontaneously. The connection between these objects is contributing to shaping a new data-driven society. The IoT network is an open-access network, where the individual users not only use the services offered but also contribute their devices to support IoT applications. Deploying IoT applications on this open network is vulnerable to various security attacks and privacy issues. The existing techniques that protect the IoT application and data within the IoT network are based on a centralized architecture that is prone to tampering. Thus, securing the IoT applications and data is still an open challenge. Blockchain, based on decentralization principles, and tamperproof distributed ledger can be helpful to strengthen the security of IoT. The secure cryptographic primitives on an immutable digital ledger in blockchain are nearly impossible or very difficult to alter. Such tamperproof ledgers can make IoT environment more secure, where network security assurance is more challenging due to limited resources in IoT devices and the huge scale and distributed nature of IoT network. On the other hand, blockchain technology has high computational overhead, excessive bandwidth consumption, and computation delay. It is still an open research challenge to understand the tradeoffs of using blockchain technology in securing IoT applications. As such, in this work, we review the current state-of-the-art solutions in securing IoT applications, using blockchain. Besides, we discuss challenges and open issues that need to be addressed to secure IoT applications by utilizing blockchain technology.
With an increasing penetration of ubiquitous connectivity, the amount of data describing the actions of end-users has been increasing dramatically, both within the domain of the Internet of Things (IoT) and other smart devices. This has led to more awareness of users in terms of protecting personal data. Within the IoT, there is a growing number of peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions, increasing the exposure to security vulnerabilities, and the risk of cyberattacks. Blockchain technology has been explored as middleware in P2P transactions, but existing solutions have mainly focused on providing a safe environment for data trade without considering potential changes in interaction topologies. we present EdgeBoT, a proof-of-concept smart contracts based platform for the IoT built on top of the ethereum blockchain. With the Blockchain of Things (BoT) at the edge of the network, EdgeBoT enables a wider variety of interaction topologies between nodes in the network and external services while guaranteeing ownership of data and end users' privacy. in EdgeBoT, edge devices trade their data directly with third parties and without the need of intermediaries. This opens the door to new interaction modalities, in which data producers at the edge grant access to batches of their data to different third parties. Leveraging the immutability properties of blockchains, together with the distributed nature of smart contracts, data owners can audit and are aware of all transactions that have occurred with their data. we report initial results demonstrating the potential of EdgeBoT within the IoT. we show that integrating our solutions on top of existing IoT systems has a relatively small footprint in terms of computational resource usage, but a significant impact on the protection of data ownership and management of data trade.
Abstract Cloud computing based on OpenStack is widely used as a distributed computing platform. OpenStack has progressed at a rapid pace, incorporating a variety of service modules; it is supported by many companies, has a community of active developers, and a diverse user base. OpenStack uses message queue to coordinate and exchange operation and status information between services. OpenStack supports various message queue services including RabbitMQ, Qpid, and ZeroMQ, whereas its distribution architecture uses RabbitMQ. As an OpenStack’s message queue service, RabbitMQ runs on a controller node as a centralized service. In case of the centralized service, increased usage may cause slowed response times and security vulnerability. This paper proposes a Hybrid decentralized Practical byzantine fault tolerance Blockchain Framework with two-step verification for OpenStack message queue service. When compared to existing OpenStack message queue service, OpenStack with the proposed framework demonstrates identical reliability a faster response time by approximately 46.75% with a two-step verification process and decentralization approach. Additionally, a reduction in the security vulnerability in the OpenStack message queue information with saving the message queue information into each node by blockchain-based decentralized data duplication approach.
This paper presents LinSBFT, a Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) protocol with the capacity of processing over 2000 smart contract transactions per second in production. LinSBFT applies to a permissionless, public blockchain system, in which there is no public-key infrastructure, based on the classic PBFT with 4 improvements: (\romannumeral1) LinSBFT achieves $O(n)$ worst-case communication volume, in contract to PBFT's $O(n^4)$; (\romannumeral2) LinSBFT rotates the leader of protocol randomly to reduce the risk of denial-of-service attacks on leader; and (\romannumeral3) each run of LinSBFT finalizes one block, which is robust against participants that are honest in one run of the protocol, and dishonest in another, and the set of participants is dynamic, which is update periodically. (\romannumeral4) LinSBFT helps the delayed nodes to catch up via a synchronization mechanism to promise the liveness. Further, in the ordinary case, LinSBFT involves only a single round of voting instead of two in PBFT, which reduces both communication overhead and confirmation time, and employs the \emph{proof-of-stake} scheme to reward all participants. Extensive experiments using data obtained from the Ethereum demonstrate that LinSBFT consistently and significantly outperforms existing in-production BFT protocols for blockchains.
Ilhaam A. Omar, Raja Jayaraman, Khaled Salah, Ibrar Yaqoob · 5 authors
Blockchain technology has disclosed unprecedented opportunities in the healthcare sector by unlocking the true value of interoperability. Specifically, the striking features of blockchain technology, such as data provenance, transparency, decentralized transaction validation, and immutability can help to compensate for stringent data management issues (e.g., patient recruitment, persistent monitoring, data management, and data analytics and accurate reporting) in clinical trials (CTs). Although several research studies show that blockchain solutions help to improve patient retention, data integrity, privacy, and ensure CTs compliance with regulatory policies, a comprehensive survey on this topic is lacking. In this survey, we provide insights into the adoption of blockchain technology in CTs. We categorize and classify the literature by devising a meticulous taxonomy of the decentralized tasks of CT and practices based on indispensable parameters. Furthermore, we provide insights on works in progress towards deploying blockchain solutions in CTs. Finally, we identify and discuss several challenges that hinder the successful implementation of blockchain technologies in CTs.
Open access
2 source records
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
The concept of smart cities has become prominent in modern metropolises due to the emergence of embedded and connected smart devices, systems, and technologies. They have enabled the connection of every "thing" to the Internet. Therefore, in the upcoming era of the Internet of Things, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) will play a crucial role in newly developed smart cities. The IoV has the potential to solve various traffic and road safety problems effectively in order to prevent fatal crashes. However, a particular challenge in the IoV, especially in Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications, is to ensure fast, secure transmission and accurate recording of the data. In order to overcome these challenges, this work is adapting Blockchain technology for real time application (RTA) to solve Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications problems. Therefore, the main novelty of this paper is to develop a Blockchain-based IoT system in order to establish secure communication and create an entirely decentralized cloud computing platform. Moreover, the authors qualitatively tested the performance and resilience of the proposed system against common security attacks. Computational tests showed that the proposed solution solved the main challenges of Vehicle-to-X (V2X) communications such as security, centralization, and lack of privacy. In addition, it guaranteed an easy data exchange between different actors of intelligent transportation systems.