Blockchain Papers

S. Pushpalatha, T. Hemalatha

No abstract is available for this record.

Mohammad Ilbeigi, Azita Morteza, Ramtin Ehsani

Reliable communication is a critical component of a successful emergency management operation in resilient cities. However, large-scale extreme events may demolish telecommunication infrastructure. The current state of practice to maintain communication when telecom infrastructure are not available heavily depend on expensive equipment (e.g., transportable telecom towers and unmanned aerial networks) that may not be readily available everywhere. To address this issue, this study aims to develop theoretical foundations for a new framework that provides a fully decentralized infrastructure-less communication system using ad hoc mobile networks. The proposed framework uses device-to-device (D2D) wireless connection, distributed ledgers adopted from Blockchain technology, and a new all-to-all network broadcasting algorithm. The proposed infrastructure-less system collects critical spatial data from available cellphone devices in the affected area and shares it among all of them. At the end of this procedure, each device will have spatial information of all available devices. When emergency teams find a device through a D2D connection, they will actually have access to spatial data of all devices and can locate all people in one step.

Jinqi Su, Runtao Ren, Yinghao Li, Raymond Y.K. Lau · 5 authors

Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) are the industrial cornerstone of intelligent transportation system (ITS), which are widely used in traffic management, automatic driving, and road optimization. With the expansion of the scale of the mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and smart vehicles (SV), VANETs will produce a large amount of data. In the open access environment of VANETs, the security of information transmission and the authenticity of user identity need to be considered when different vehicles communicate. In order to solve the cybersecurity risks of large‐scale deployment of VANET, this paper proposes a trusted blockchain‐based signcryption protocol and data management (TB‐SCDM) for authentication and authorization (A&A) in VANETs. In the existing attack model, TB‐SCDM can ensure the confidentiality and undeniability of information, as well as can effectively resist 51% attacks, eclipse attacks and double‐spending attacks, etc. Through benchmark analysis, this scheme has higher computing efficiency and lower storage cost compared with other existing schemes.

D. N. Rao, G. Vidhya, M. Rajesh, Vipin Jain · 7 authors

The new IoT apps will not be able to inspire people to utilize them and may ultimately lose all their potential if an interoperable and trustworthy ecosystem is not provided. IoT has its extra security difficulties such as information storage, administration, privacy concerns, and authentication. The presently deployed IoT apps have encountered various security and privacy assaults globally. Due to being less secure and low powered, the IoT devices present a simple entryway to the adversaries to obtain access to the corporate networks, leading to giving easy control over all of the data of the users. The objective of this doctorate proposed work will be to solve the security associated difficulties in multiple IoT domains like the e‐commerce, vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET), mobile ad hoc networks (MANET), and Internet of Drones (IoD). The proposed study focuses on the development of a distributed framework for IoT based on blockchain. The framework includes the usage of Ethereum‐based smart contracts and auction models to increase the income and QoS for both the seller and the buyer and the development of a DAG chain‐based distributed framework for parking lot allocation in a network of automobiles. The suggested model includes the requirement of obtaining agreement among the nodes with probability one in such a circumstance. The suggested model demonstrates to be predictable as typical voting‐based consensus protocols like Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) and at the same time can accommodate a high number of nodes even in an asynchronous setting. Research on Byzantine fault‐tolerant systems has been ongoing for more than four decades, and although the solutions were shown to be feasible early on, they remained unworkable for a long time. With PBFT, the first feasible solution was provided in 1999, and this sparked fresh research that has resulted in unique applications that are still being developed today employing this technology. Despite the fact that the safety and liveness properties of PBFT‐type protocols have been thoroughly investigated, when it comes to practical performance, only empirical results—often obtained in artificial environments—are known, and imperfections in the communication channels are not explicitly considered. It is our goal in this paper to propose the first performance model for PBFT that takes into account the effect of unreliable channels as well as the usage of alternative transport protocols across those channels. We also performed a large number of simulations to test the model and acquire a better understanding of the influence of different deployment factors on the total transaction timeframe.

Reza Soltani, Lovina Saxena, Rohit Joshi, Srinivas Sampalli

Routing in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are based on multi-hop communication in which the messages pass through multiple sensor nodes, and hence routing algorithms must rely on trust relationships between neighboring nodes. The open access nature of WSNs leads to the possibility of nodes becoming compromised and consequently being turned into malicious objects. One such attack on WSNs is the Sybil attack, in which an attacker can take control of a legitimate node or enter a malicious node into the network and create fake identities. Consequently, they can change the behavior of the WSN, such as its routing schema to cause loops or wrong directions to manipulate data and consume the energy of the network, or even target cluster heads. In this paper, we present a novel technique based on IOTA Tangle, a distributed ledger technology, for the detection and prevention of Sybil attacks by protecting routing data. A transaction history on IOTA is maintained for detecting malicious node injection, and IOTA currency is used as a reputation score to prevent malicious nodes and protect the routing table. Even if an attacker gains access to the network, all routing data can be tracked in IOTA Tangle that will alert the base station about this attack. The technique has been simulated and evaluated using a proof-of-concept prototype.

Kumar, Navdeep, Alexandre Reiffers-Masson, Isabel Amigo, Santiago Ruano Rincón · 6 authors

We present a new stochastic model for the evolution of Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG)-based distributed ledgers (DL), under the presence of heterogeneous delay. This model is used to analyse the performance metrics of the DL, showing in particular that the number of unapproved messages does not diverge to infinity, even under the presence of delay. We propose an analysis based on conveniently defined sets, as well as an alternative drift-based analysis. The former allows to get a bound on the number of unapproved messages, while the latter, through a simpler analysis, allows to probe the existence of such bound. For particular scenarios, we are able to derive the expected value of the drift of unapproved messages, through a Markov process-based approach. State-of-the-art mathematical models trying to capture the impact of delays on the performance of such DLs rely on some particular simplifications. In contrast, through our model, we are able to analytically derive similar performance guarantees, in a more realistic setup. In particular, we focus on IOTA foundation's tangle, while our results can be extended to other DAG-based distributed ledgers. We compare our results to results obtained in a real testbed, showing good accordance between them.

Shu-Ping Lu, Chin‐Laung Lei, Cheng-Yun Ho, Shy-Shang Hwang · 5 authors

Due to the mobility of devices, device-to-device (D2D) communication is a promising fifth-generation (5G) technology in dynamic environments for improving message transmission efficiency for group communication. Additionally, all services in an ad hoc network are current Vehicle Ad Hoc Network (VANET) applications. Therefore, D2D communication has been introduced in ad hoc environments to reduce latency during vehicle conversations, such as autonomous vehicle solutions and drone fleet management for cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) modules and Internet of Drones (IoDs) networks. However, providing secure and effective group communication is an urgent challenge. To solve these problems, we propose a dynamic group management solution based on distributed ledger technology. This study demonstrates that a distributed ledger-based hierarchical architecture for dynamic group management is faster and more adaptable without compromising security and performance. Furthermore, the proposed method can facilitate the transfer of direct communication data without a centralized database, thereby reducing the chance of a single point of failure. In addition, the research was tested by a third party that has established close cooperation with world-leading automotive electronics suppliers in Taiwan.

Mohammad Ilbeigi, Azita Morteza, Ramtin Ehsani

In the aftermath of a disaster, natural or man-made, successful emergency management operations vitally depend on reliable communication infrastructures. However, large-scale extreme events may dismantle telecommunication infrastructures and impair rescue operations. The current state of practice to maintain communication when infrastructures are not operable mostly focuses on using temporary infrastructures including mobile telecom towers. However, these centralized solutions heavily depend on equipment that may not be readily available. To address this issue, this paper aims to create theoretical foundations for, and empirically examine the performance of, a novel decentralized and infrastructure-less communication system that uses an ad hoc mobile network, distributed ledger and Blockchain technology, and an all-to-all broadcasting routing algorithm. When the proposed communication system is used, mobile devices in the affected area connect with each other through device-to-device Wi-Fi Direct, create a temporary mobile ad hoc network, and share spatial information through the stepwise routing algorithm and distributed ledgers. At the end of this process, each device in the network will have spatial information of all available devices in the area. Therefore, when first responders arrive in the affected area, they can locate all devices and have access to all collected information immediately through a direct connection to only one device in the area. The outcomes of this study will fundamentally transform the emergency communication solutions and can significantly shorten the duration of rescue operations by helping first responders locate citizens in the affected area faster and more efficiently.

Joachim Neu, Srivatsan Sridhar, Lei Yang, David Tse · 5 authors

Satoshi Nakamoto's Proof-of-Work (PoW) longest chain (LC) protocol was a breakthrough for Internet-scale open-participation consensus. Many Proof-of-Stake (PoS) variants of Nakamoto's protocol such as Ouroboros or Snow White aim to preserve the advantages of LC by mimicking PoW LC closely, while mitigating downsides of PoW by using PoS for Sybil resistance. Previous works have proven these PoS LC protocols secure assuming all network messages are delivered within a bounded delay. However, this assumption is not compatible with PoS when considering bandwidth constraints in the underlying communication network. This is because PoS enables the adversary to reuse block production opportunities and spam the network with equivocating blocks, which is impossible in PoW. The bandwidth constraint necessitates that nodes choose carefully which blocks to spend their limited download budget on. We show that 'download along the longest header chain', a natural download rule for PoW LC, emulated by PoS variants, is insecure for PoS LC. Instead, we propose 'download towards the freshest block' and prove that PoS LC with this download rule is secure in bandwidth constrained networks. Our result can be viewed as a first step towards the co-design of consensus and network layer protocols.

Xintong Ling, Pengcheng Chen, Jiaheng Wang, Zhi Ding

Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is an infrastructure-less extended scenario of blockchain radio access network (B-RAN); meanwhile, the decentralization of B-RAN befits MANETs. In the framework of B-RAN, we propose a blockchain-based multi-hop routing protocol, namely Data Broker, for non-cooperative MANETs. To incentivize the collaboration among selfish peers, we record the identity information of participating brokers on a ledger list. However, blockchain cannot guarantee the integrity of such a routing ledger directly. Therefore, we design a ledger safeguard mechanism, along with reward policies, to avoid the ledger list being tampered with or modified by dishonest brokers. The experimental results show that the proposed Data Broker can significantly improve the network performance of non-cooperative MANETs regarding latency and loss rate.

Yahya Hassanzadeh-Nazarabadi, Sanaz Taheri-Boshrooyeh, Safa Otoum, Seyhan Ucar · 5 authors

Several distributed system paradigms utilize Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) to realize structured peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays. DHT structures arise as the most commonly used organizations for peers that can efficiently perform crucial services such as data storage, replication, query resolution, and load balancing. With the advances in various distributed system technologies, novel and efficient solutions based on DHTs emerge and play critical roles in system design. DHT-based methods and communications have been proposed to address challenges such as scalability, availability, reliability and performance, by considering unique characteristics of these technologies. In this article, we propose a classification of the state-of-the-art DHT-based methods focusing on their system architecture, communication, routing and technological aspects across various system domains. To the best of our knowledge, there is no comprehensive survey on DHT-based applications from system architecture and communication perspectives that spans various domains of recent distributed system technologies. We investigate the recently emerged DHT-based solutions in the seven key domains of edge and fog computing, cloud computing, blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT), Online Social Networks (OSNs), Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), and Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs). In contrast to the existing surveys, our study goes beyond the commonly known DHT methods such as storage, routing, and lookup, and identifies diverse DHT-based solutions including but not limited to aggregation, task scheduling, resource management and discovery, clustering and group management, federation, data dependency management, and data transmission. Furthermore, we identify open problems and discuss future research guidelines for each domain.

Nitin Gupta, Jagdeep Singh, Sanjay Kumar Dhurandher, Zhu Han

Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 enable interconnection among various devices. An opportunistic IoT network is an ad hoc network that is formed by the nodes (e.g., smart vehicles and mobile phones) by utilizing various short radio range techniques. In this kind of network, information forwarding and dissemination among other smart devices is based upon the opportunistic contact nature mainly due to network dynamics and user mobility. Routing plays an important part in these kinds of networks since there does not exist a pre-established route (Tyagi and Kumar, 2013). Nodes are often selected dynamically based upon many parameters such that messages can be delivered successfully to the destination devices or sinks. However, these intermediate nodes are often selfish because routing these packets costs energy. In the case of incomplete cooperation and asymmetric information, message delivery can be severely degraded, which increases the network delay affecting the overall network performance. Therefore, this work proposes an incentive design mechanism based on the contract theory to reward intermediate nodes appropriately to forward the messages. The contract theory is used to model the forwarding-forwarder node interaction as a labor market with private information. First, the users are classified into a finite number of types according to their ability of forwarding the message, and the service trading between the forwarding and forwarder nodes is properly modeled. Furthermore, the necessary and sufficient conditions are derived to provide the incentives to the nodes involved in the message forwarding. Extensive simulations show that the proposed mechanism is effective in providing incentives and outperforms other benchmark schemes in terms of delivery probability, average latency, and overhead ratio.

Youssef Inedjaren

Contribution au système de transport intelligent : sécurité des communications dans les réseaux Ad hoc véhiculaires Les systèmes de transport intelligents (ITS) sont un organe vital de l'évolution du secteur du transport routier et constituent l'une des principales étapes du mouvement vers l'automatisation des véhicules. Ces systèmes utilisent des technologies permettant aux véhicules de communiquer entre eux ou avec l'infrastructure routière. En augmentant la qualité et la fiabilité des informations, les STI peuvent améliorer la sécurité routière et l'efficacité du trafic, à condition que la cybersécurité et la protection des données soient assurées.Les réseaux ad hoc de véhicules (VANET) sont une projection des ITS et sont devenus un domaine de recherche important ces dernières années. Étant de nature ad hoc et ayant une mobilité élevée comme caractéristique principale, les VANET impliquent une topologie très dynamique, ce qui signifie que la plupart des protocoles de routage dédiés aux réseaux mobiles ad hoc (MANET) nécessitent des changements remarquables pour être adéquats pour les VANET.L'objectif principal de cette thèse est d'améliorer les performances des entités physiques et des communications au sein d'un ITS en termes de sécurité. Nous nous concentrons sur la fiabilité, la connectivité et l'attaque du trou noir. Nous étudions et proposons des solutions techniques à partir de la couche réseau qui jouent un rôle fondamental dans l'atténuation des défis créés par la nature de l'environnement véhiculaire.Principalement, nos contributions sont de trois ordres. Premièrement, nous considérons les efforts visant à améliorer la fiabilité des communications dans les réseaux de véhicules. Ces efforts sont représentés par des protocoles proposés visant à assurer la livraison des messages au (x) destinataire (s). En nous concentrant sur les applications de sécurité, nous nous concentrons sur l'architecture de communication ETSI ITS, en appliquant la méthodologie Threat Vulnerability Risk Assessment (TVRA). Les résultats de notre analyse sont une liste de vulnérabilités avec leur niveau de risque de gravité. Deuxièmement, nous proposons le protocole FT-OLSR (Fuzzy Trust Optimized Link State Routing), qui est une nouvelle extension de sécurité du protocole OLSR existant. FT-OLSR est basé sur l'échange de messages de contrôle avec des voisins à un bond pour permettre à chaque véhicule de calculer le niveau de confiance de ses voisins en utilisant la logique floue. Enfin, nous proposons un système de gestion de la confiance décentralisé basé sur la blockchain. Ce système est basé sur le protocole FT-OLSR, qui utilise les messages de routage échangés (HELLO, TC) dans VANET, pour calculer les valeurs de confiance, puis détecter les véhicules du trou noir. Dans le schéma proposé, une fois que l'attaquant est identifié, il est isolé de la communication en partageant ces informations en toute sécurité sur le réseau à l'aide de la blockchain. En raison des ressources limitées des VANET, le modèle Proof-of-Trust (PoT) est inséré dans le FT-OLSR, au lieu d'utiliser Proof-of-Work ou Proof-of-Stake, dans lequel l'enjeu correspond à la valeur de confiance de chaque nœud mobile. L'algorithme de consensus PoT est utilisé pour élire les validateurs. Une fois qu'un attaquant est détecté, le validateur confirme l'intégrité du rapport et crée un bloc contenant les informations des attaquants. Le bloc est diffusé sur le réseau et ajouté à la blockchain locale de chaque véhicule. Par conséquent, si le même attaquant tente de communiquer à n'importe quel endroit du réseau, une seule recherche de la blockchain peut isoler l'attaquant.

Conglin Ran, Shuailing Yan, Huang Liang, Lei Zhang

Abstract Ad hoc network is a special network with centerless and dynamic topology. Due to the free mobility of the nodes, routing security has been a bottleneck problem that plagues its development. Therefore, a multi-path QoS (quality of service) routing security algorithm based on blockchain by improving the traditional AODV (ad hoc on-demand distance vector) protocol (AODV-MQS) is proposed. Firstly, a chain of nodes is established in the network and the states of all nodes by making the intermediate nodes on the chain are saved. Secondly, the smart contract in the blockchain is set to filter out the nodes that meet the QoS constraints. Finally, two largest unrelated communication paths are found in the blockchain network through smart contract, one of which is the main path and the other is the standby path. Simulation experiments show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is better than other algorithms, especially in an unsafe environment.

Sanjay Kumar Dhurandher, Jagdeep Singh, Petros Nicopolitidis, Raghav Kumar · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

David Cordova Morales, Alexandre Laubé, Thi Mai Trang Nguyen, Guy Pujolle

Blockchain is one of the most prominent emerging technologies. It offers the ability to maintain an anti-tamper distributed database, ensuring the integrity and authenticity of data in a decentralized system. However, when using blockchain in a dynamic community, such as mobile nodes in an ad hoc and mesh networks, the chain structure is no longer enough to deal with node mobility. In this paper, we address the challenges of using a DAG-based blockchain for mobile and ad hoc networks (MANETs) that we call “blockgraph”. We define the characteristics of the blockgraph framework. This includes: the requirement needed for a consensus protocol in order to be resilient to network partitions; the specifications of the blockgraph protocol that ensure the maintenance of the blockgraph data structure; and a group management system that reacts to network topology changes that provide with relevant network topology information to the blockgraph framework. Finally, we implemented our framework in the discrete event network simulator NS3 as a proof-of-concept for our blockgraph.

Gia Nhu Nguyen, Nin Ho Le Viet, A. Francis Saviour Devaraj, R. Gobi · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

V. Lakshman Narayana, Divya Midhunchakkaravarthy

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are non-fixed framework systems and there are such a large number of issues with them because of their dynamic topology, portable nodes, security, data transfer capacity, restricted battery strength and so forth. Trust is an association, dependability, unwavering excellence, and loyalty of the nodes in the system. A trusted routing plan is essential to guarantee the routing security and productivity of sensor systems. In perspective on these issues, this manuscript proposes a trusted routing plan utilizing block chain and building up a security model to improve the routing security and productivity for ad hoc networks. The possible routing plan is given for acquiring routing data of routing nodes on the block chain, which makes the routing data distinct and difficult to alter. The support learning model is utilized to help routing nodes progressively select increasingly trusted and productive routing connections. The proposed work introduces a Trust Based Efficient Blockchain Linked Routing Method (TbEBCLRM) for a system of trusted and untrusted nodes. The proposed method utilizes blockchain method to improve security in the ad hoc networks and to avoid malicious activities during communication is initiated. The proposed method is compared with the traditional methods and the results show that the proposed method exhibits better performance in terms of accuracy, security level, trust level and energy consumption.

V. Lakshman Narayana, Divya Midhunchakkaravarthy

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) are infrastructure-less networks that are mainly used for establishing communication during the situation where wired network fails. Security related information collection is a fundamental part of the identification of attacks in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). A node should find accessible routes to remaining nodes for information assortment and gather security related information during route discovery for choosing secured routes. During data communication, malicious nodes enter the network and cause disturbances during data transmission and reduce the performance of the system. In this manuscript, a Time Interval Based Blockchain Model (TIBBM) for security related information assortment that identifies malicious nodes in the MANET is proposed. The proposed model builds the Blockchain information structure which is utilized to distinguish malicious nodes at specified time intervals. To perform a malicious node identification process, a Network Block Monitoring Node (NBMN) is selected after route selection and this node will monitor the blocks created by the nodes in the routing table. At long last, NBMN node understands the location of malicious nodes by utilizing the Blocks created. The proposed model is compared with the traditional malicious node identification model and the results show that the proposed model exhibits better performance in malicious node detection.

Steven Platt, Miquel Oliver

While direct allocation of spectrum and evolved medium access protocols\nprovide a base for ubiquitous wireless connectivity, the existing TCP/IP and\nOSI models were designed for wired networks and do not address open\ninterconnection of air interfaces. Without an interconnection model for the air\ninterface, existing network designs continue to tie wireless medium access to\nthat of the backhaul provider for ownership of access and identity trust,\nresulting in limitations on functionality and coverage. In this paper, we\npropose a novel solution to access ownership and identity trust by extending\nthe TCP network standard, under a new model we propose, named TCP-Air which\nintegrates distributed ledger technologies directly at the air interface.\nFurther, we present two use cases of the TCP-Air model, demonstrating\napplications not feasible under existing permissioned-access network designs.\n

Gao Liu, Huidong Dong, Zheng Yan, Xiaokang Zhou · 5 authors

Security-related data collection is an essential part for attack detection and security measurement in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). Due to no fixed infrastructure of MANETs, a detection node playing as a collector should discover available routes to a collection node for data collection. Notably, route discovery suffers from many attacks (e.g., wormhole attack), thus the detection node should also collect securityrelated data during route discovery and analyze these data for determining reliable routes. However, few literatures provide incentives for security-related data collection in MANETs, and thus the detection node might not collect sufficient data, which greatly impacts the accuracy of attack detection and security measurement. In this paper, we propose B4SDC, a blockchain system for security-related data collection in MANETs. Through controlling the scale of RREQ forwarding in route discovery, the collector can constrain its payment and simultaneously make each forwarder of control information (namely RREQs and RREPs) obtain rewards as much as possible to ensure fairness. At the same time, B4SDC avoids collusion attacks with cooperative receipt reporting, and spoofing attacks by adopting a secure digital signature. Based on a novel Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism by accumulating stakes through message forwarding, B4SDC not only provides incentives for all participating nodes, but also avoids forking and ensures high efficiency and real decentralization at the same time. We analyze B4SDC in terms of incentives and security, and evaluate its performance through simulations. The thorough analysis and experimental results show the efficacy and effectiveness of B4SDC.

Yang Qin, Tiantian Zhang, Mengya Li

No abstract is available for this record.

Maqsood Ahamed Abdul Careem, Aveek Dutta

One of the core issues in routing packets within Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) is the lack of trust and reputation of the participating nodes, which often leads to unreliable packet delivery. We use a fraction of nodes to validate routing actions taken by other nodes and leverage the distributed consensus mechanism in Blockchain networks to accrue the reputation of each node. Specifically, we employ heterogeneous difficulty for Proof of Work to represent the credibility of validation and design a scoring system to isolate malicious nodes via distributed consensus. The reputation of a node is then based on the combination of the difficulty level and the score. This reputation is incorporated in a novel routing metric to calculate the shortest, most reputed path between a source and destination node. The goal is to discourage malicious nodes by excluding those from participating in routing packets. A joint simulation of the Blockchain and routing algorithm reveal ≈12% improvement in overall packet delivery in the presence of routing attacks, compared to conventional routing algorithms in MANETs.

Yang Liu, Yuwen Zhang, Siyu Zhu, Cheng Chi

With the rapid development of Internet, security and privacy of the Domain Name System (DNS) are becoming increasingly important. Thanks to its decentralized structure and immutability, blockchain technology has the potential to address relevant security and privacy challenges in the DNS. In this paper, we survey the blockchain-based DNS for different architectures. We envision our study to motivate more studies on the DNS based on the blockchain.