C Karthik, Madhavarapu Chandan, Abhinandan, Mohammad Rayan Baig
Blockchain Technology is an emerging technology in the software world. In order to understand the applications of the blockchain, it is necessary to understand how blockchain works. Blockchain was first introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, which serve a Peer-to-Peer ledger for registering cryptocurrency bitcoin transactions. The blockchain is a list of records stored in the form of a chain. A blockchain is a decentralized distributed ledger which means a number of records are stored in a block and the block is added to the chain. Each block consists of a number of transactions for each transaction there will be a unique hash value, all hash values of the number of the transaction are combined and made a single hash value of the block and this follows Merkle root hash method. The invention of blockchain in cryptocurrency bitcoin solved the issue of double spending. The invention of blockchain in data backup can decrease the security complexity and duplication of the data. Rather than storing the data in one single hub that is the centralized system we can store the data in the blockchain which is a decentralized distributed ledger. In this decentralized system, the file is divided into a number of chunks stored into the blockchain which makes it difficult for data hacking and data tampering. In a centralized system if a server goes down then data is lost forever and in centralized system records can easily be altered because it does not have a backup to verify the records but in the blockchain, every peer in the network has the copy of the records and it is difficult to tamper the records. The files can be divided by a technology called Reed-Soloman erasure coding, generally used in CDs and DVDs. Reed-Soloman erasure coding allows dividing files in a redundant manner, where any 1 of 3 segments can fully recover a user's file.
Smart Contracts are software code that resides within a blockchain, using its infrastructure as an advantage and guarantee of execution. Blockchain and smart contracts are enabling new business models and standards to information systems. However, a smart contract needs to be well tested before to be published in a blockchain, since it cannot be changed after being deployed. The execution time to deploy smart contracts and run their tests is considerable because all transactions must be mined before being added to a new block. This work proposes an approach to reuse the execution of the deployment and the setup of unit test in smart contracts to reduce the execution time of these tests. Experiments have shown a large reduction in the execution time of smart contract unit tests, without breaking the principle of test independency.
A Blockchain Technology (BCT) is an emergent digital technology that in recent years has gained widespread traction in various industrial, public, and business sectors; primarily in financial and banking realms owing to the rapid increase of cryptocurrency valuation in recent years. A blockchain Technology (BCT) is, in essence, a decentralized ledger that records every transaction made in the network, known as a ‘block’, the body of which comprises of encrypted data of the entire transaction history. It was introduced as the working mechanism that formed the operational basis of Bitcoin, the first digital cryptocurrency to gain extensive mainstream appeal. The introduction of decentralized technology in any industry would require strengthened security, enforce accountability, and could potentially accelerate a shift in workflow dynamics from the current centralized architectures to a decentralized, cooperative chain of command and affect a cultural and societal change by encouraging trust and transparency. It was evident that the underlying principles characteristic of BCT functional attributes and secure digital infrastructure could find application in nearly any conceivable industry. BCT aims at creating a system that would be a robust self-regulating, self-monitoring and cyber-resilient system that assures the facilitation and protection of truly efficient data exchange system.
This research depicts a survey of blockchain technology and its applications in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry and examines the potential incorporation within the Building Information Modeling (BIM) process. Furthermore, the paper investigates how employing distributed ledger technology (DLT) could be advantageous in the BIM workflow by emphasizing network security, providing more reliable data storage and management of permissions, ensuring change tracing and data ownership. The focus on collaboration and the distributed nature of both technologies imply the suitability for implementing an integrative framework, and in extension, posit that effectively leveraging DLT’s robust, reliable, and secure network infrastructure, and BIM workflow processes can be significantly enhanced. The paper examines the fundamentals of distributed ledgers, their prospective future applications and current advances, and their categorization based on intrinsic characteristics of consensus reaching and permissions. Moreover, the study investigates the potential application of BCT in improving the framework for automating the design review process such as using Smart Contract (SC) technologies and Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), as well as discussing future research areas. HLF is the underlying BCT infrastructure that can serve to highlight key postulations to elucidate the idealized BIM workflow aptly.
The existing LTE mobile system uses the vertical model to handle the session-based security management. However, the goal of this paper is to propose a packet key-based security management scheme on the blockchain control plane to enhance the existing session key-based security scheme and overcome the limitation that the existing vertical model, as well as the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) based horizontal model, confronts within solving end-to-end security management. The proposed blockchain-based security management (BSM) scheme enables each peer to easily obtain the necessary parameters required to manage the packet key-based security system. The important features of the BSM scheme include the renewal process, which enables the different packet data streams to use completely different security parameters for the security management. In addition, because even blind values cannot be exposed to the possible attackers, our BSM scheme guarantees very secure end-to-end data transfer against active attacks such as falsification of data and transactions. Finally, this paper compares the BSM scheme with the existing vertical model to prove the advantageous effects on latency.
Yongjun Ren, Fujian Zhu, Jian Qi, Jin Wang · 5 authors
Edge computing provides a unified platform for computing, networking, and storage resources, enabling data to be processed in a timely and efficient manner near the source. Thus, it has become the basic platform for industrial Internet of things (IIoT). However, computing′s unique features have also introduced new security problems. To solve the problem, in this paper, blockchain-based identity management combining access control mechanism is designed under edge computing. The self-certified cryptography is utilized to realize the registration and authentication of network entities. We bind the generated implicit certificate to its identity and construct the identity and certificate management mechanism based on blockchain. Secondly, an access control mechanism based on Bloom filter is designed and integrated with identity management. Moreover, for secure communication in resource-constrained edge devices, a lightweight secret key agreement protocol based on self-authenticated public key is constructed. These mechanisms work together to provide data security guarantees for IIoT such as authentication, auditability, and confidentiality.
Providing security and privacy for the Internet of Things (IoT) applications while ensuring a minimum level of performance requirements is an open research challenge. Recently, blockchain offers a promising solution to overcome the current peer-to-peer networks limitations. In the context of IoT, Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT)-based consensus protocols are used due to the energy efficiency advantage over other consensus protocols. The consensus process in BFT is done by electing a group of authenticated nodes. The elected nodes will be responsible for ensuring the data blocks' integrity through defining a total order on the blocks and preventing the concurrently appended blocks from containing conflicting data. However, the blockchain consensus layer contributes the most performance overhead. Therefore, a performance study needs to be conducted especially for the IoT applications that are subject to maximum delay constraints. In this paper, we obtain a mathematical expression to calculate the end-to-end delay with different network configurations, i.e., number of network hops and replica machines. We validate the proposed analytical model with simulation. Our results show that the unique characteristics of IoT traffic have an undeniable impact on the end-to-end delay requirement.
Xi Lin, Jianhua Li, Jun Wu, Haoran Liang · 5 authors
Nowadays, benefit from more powerful edge computing devices and edge artificial intelligence (edge-AI) could be introduced into Internet of Things (IoT) to find the knowledge derived from massive sensory data, such as cyber results or models of classification, and detection and prediction from physical environments. Heterogeneous edge-AI devices in IoT will generate isolated and distributed knowledge slices, thus knowledge collaboration and exchange are required to complete complex tasks in IoT intelligent applications with numerous selfish nodes. Therefore, knowledge trading is needed for paid sharing in edge-AI enabled IoT. Most existing works only focus on knowledge generation rather than trading in IoT. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a peer-to-peer (P2P) knowledge market to make knowledge tradable in edge-AI enabled IoT. We first propose an implementation architecture of the knowledge market. Moreover, we develop a knowledge consortium blockchain for secure and efficient knowledge management and trading for the market, which includes a new cryptographic currency knowledge coin, smart contracts, and a new consensus mechanism proof of trading. Besides, a noncooperative game based knowledge pricing strategy with incentives for the market is also proposed. The security analysis and performance simulation show the security and efficiency of our knowledge market and incentive effects of knowledge pricing strategy. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time to propose an efficient and incentive P2P knowledge market in edge-AI enabled IoT.
Marten Sigwart, Michael Borkowski, Marco Peise, Stefan Schulte · 5 authors
As more and more applications and services depend on data collected and provided by Internet of Things (IoT) devices, it is of importance that such data can be trusted. Data provenance solutions together with blockchain technology are one way to make data more trustworthy. However, current solutions do not address the heterogeneous nature of IoT applications and their data. In this work, we identify functional and non-functional requirements for a generic IoT data provenance framework, and conceptualise the framework as a layered architecture. Using a proof-of-concept implementation based on Ethereum smart contracts, data provenance can be realised for a wide range of IoT use cases. Benefits of a generic framework include simplified adoption and a more rapid implementation of data provenance for the IoT.
Bin Cao, Yixin Li, Lei Zhang, Long Zhang · 7 authors
Blockchain has been regarded as a promising technology for Internet of Things (IoT), since it provides significant solutions for decentralized network which can address trust and security concerns, high maintenance cost problem, etc. The decentralization provided by blockchain can be largely attributed to the use of consensus mechanism, which enables peer-to-peer trading in a distributed manner without the involvement of any third party. This article starts from introducing the basic concept of blockchain and illustrating why consensus mechanism plays an indispensable role in a blockchain enabled IoT system. Then, we discuss the main ideas of two famous consensus mechanisms including Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), and list their limitations in IoT. Next, two mainstream Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG) based consensus mechanisms, i.e., the Tangle and Hashgraph, are reviewed to show why DAG consensus is more suitable for IoT system than PoW and PoS. Potential issues and challenges of DAG based consensus mechanism to be addressed in the future are discussed in the last.
Philipp Frauenthaler, Michael Borkowski, Stefan Schulte
The suitability of a particular blockchain for a given use case depends mainly on the blockchain's functional and non-functional properties. Such properties may vary over time, and thus, a selected blockchain may become unsuitable for a given use case. This uncertainty may hinder the widespread adoption of blockchain technologies in general. To mitigate the impact of volatile blockchain properties, we propose a framework that monitors several blockchains, allows the user to define functional and non-functional requirements, determines the most appropriate blockchain, and enables the switchover to that chain at runtime. Our evaluation using a reference implementation shows that switching to another blockchain can save cost and enable users to benefit from better performance and a higher level of trust.
With the rapid development of communication technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) is getting out of its infancy, into full maturity, and tends to be developed in an explosively rapid way, with more and more data transmitted and processed. As a result, the ability to manage devices deployed worldwide has been given more and advanced requirements in practical application performances. Most existing IoT platforms are highly centralized architectures, which suffer from various technical limitations, such as a cyber-attack and single point of failure. A new solution direction is essential to enhance data accessing, while regulating it with government mandates in privacy and security. In this paper, we propose an integrated IoT platform using blockchain technology to guarantee sensing data integrity. The aim of this platform is to afford the device owner a practical application that provides a comprehensive, immutable log and allows easy access to their devices deployed in different domains. It also provides characteristics of general IoT systems, allows for real-time monitoring, and control between the end user and device. The business logic of the application is defined by the smart contract, which contains rules and conditions. The proposed approach is backed by a proof of concept implementation in realistic IoT scenarios, utilizing Raspberry Pi devices and a permissioned network called Hyperledger Fabric. Lastly, a benchmark study using various performance metrics is made to highlight the significance of the proposed work. The analysis results indicate that the designed platform is suitable for the resource-constrained IoT architecture and is scalable to be extended in various IoT scenarios.
The increasing number of intelligent Machine-to-Machine Communication (M2M) devices in the end-user domain provide good resources for creating and sharing M2M application services. Therefore, transferring the role of a traditional centralized service provider to decentralized peers (end-users) acting as service providers is very promising. However, the future of decentralized M2M application services which are independently provided or consumed by several end-users in the M2M community depends on trust. Untrustworthy peers trying to deploy malfunctioning services for others mitigate the benefits of decentralized systems. Nowadays, the concept of distributed ledger and blockchain has an increased popularity regarding trustless computing among communities operating without centralized authorities. This research publication provides a comprehensive analysis and approach merging the concepts of M2M application services, trust and distributed ledger technologies. Moreover, this publication presents an optimized Trust Evaluation System which is used to ensure trustworthiness among peers in a M2M community. To improve the Trust Evaluation System the integration of blockchain for data storage is introduced. Additionally, blockchain technology is used to extend the existing trust model of the Trust Evaluation System to enable tamper-proof data and detection of untrustworthy peers. This publication reviews several existing approaches in the academic and industry sector to highlight the limitations of the blockchain regarding the consensus and proposes a novel Trust Consensus Protocol. This research publication also provides a practical evaluation of the proposed protocol.
Blockchain offers the ability to create distributed databases that can be trusted, even if some actors on the network may be malicious. We consider the problem of reducing the read overhead of a ledger built using blockchains as part of the IDASH 2018 competition. In this scenario, we have multiple nodes granted to access a server. The goal is to store the activity logs of the nodes accessing the server in a secure fashion, using a blockchain-based ledger. To increase search speed, we propose splitting the ledger into groups based on expected search terms, and storing each group on a separate blockchain. By doing so, a search for all records of a specific type is transformed from a linear search on all records, to a linear search on a small subset of records. In our solution, this increases search efficiency by a factor of 8, at the cost of increasing storage overhead by a factor of 4. The system can be adjusted based on what types of searches are expected to reduce this overhead.
This study has been undertaken to all the segments and functioning of BlockChain and Cryptocurrency. They have become one of the hottest topics in the tech and finance world. This technology directly affects the financial world. It is safe, secure, and fast and expanding with a predicted rate of 42.8% by 2020. The immense potential this technology holds for future growth gives rise to the concept of BitCoin, Ethereum, etc. There are more than 2000 startups based on BlockChain Technology with a high market inclination.
Abbas Yazdinejad, Reza M. Parizi, Ali Dehghantanha, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo
5G mobile networks provide additional benefits in terms of lower latency, higher data rates, and more coverage, in comparison to 4G networks, and they are also coming close to standardization. For example, 5G has a new level of data transfer and processing speed that assures users are not disconnected when they move from one cell to another; thus, supporting faster connection. However, 5G comes with its own technical challenges, such as those relating to authentication handover and user privacy protection. In 5G, for example, the frequent displacement of the users among the cells as a result of repeated authentication handovers often lead to a delay, contradicting the 5G objectives. Using inefficient authentication handover could also cause performance degradation among heterogeneous 5G cells, and increases the possibility of occurring user privacy and security issues. In this paper, we propose a new authentication approach that utilizes blockchain and software defined networking (SDN) techniques to remove the unnecessary re-authentication in repeated handover among heterogeneous cells. The proposed approach is designed to assure the low delay, appropriate for the 5G network in which users are replaced with the least delay among heterogeneous cells using their public and private keys provided by the devised blockchain component while protecting their privacy. In our comparison between Proof-of-Work (POW)-based and network-based models, the delay of our authentication handover is shown to be less than 1 ms. Also, our approach demonstrates less signaling overhead and energy consumption compared to peer models.
Boubakr Nour, Adlen Ksentini, Nicolas Herbaut, Pantelis A. Frangoudis · 5 authors
With advent of 5G, the classical mobile network business model is shifting from a network-operator-oriented business to a more open system with several actors. In this context, the network slice provider will play the role of an intermediate entity between the vertical service provider and the resource provider. To deploy a network slice, the network slice provider will require a brokering mechanism, which allows it to lease resources from different providers in a secure and private way. In this letter, we propose a broker design based on blockchain technology, providing a mechanism that secures and ensures anonymous transactions.
Faisal Jamil, Lei Hang, Kyuhyung Kim, Do‐Hyeun Kim
At present, in pharmacology one of the most serious problems is counterfeit drugs. The Health Research Funding organization reported that in developing countries, nearly 10–30% of the drugs are fake. Counterfeiting is not the main issue itself, but, rather, the fact that, as compared to traditional drugs, these counterfeit drugs produce different side effects to human health. According to WHO, around 30% of the total medicine sold in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is counterfeit. This is the major worldwide problem, and the situation is worse in developing countries, where one out of every 10 medicines are either fake or do not follow drug regulations. The rise of Internet pharmacies has made it more difficult to standardize drug safety. It is difficult to detect counterfeits because these drugs pass through different complex distributed networks, thus forming opportunities for counterfeits to enter the authentic supply chain. The safety of the pharmaceutical supply chain has become a major concern for public health, which is a collective process. In this paper, we propose a novel drug supply chain management using Hyperledger Fabric based on blockchain technology to handle secure drug supply chain records. The proposed system solves this problem by conducting drug record transactions on a blockchain to create a smart healthcare ecosystem with a drug supply chain. A smart contract is launched to give time-limited access to electronic drug records and also patient electronic health records. We also carried out a number of experiments in order to demonstrate the usability and efficiency of the designed platform. Finally, we used Hyperledger Caliper as a benchmarking tool to conduct the performance of the designed system in terms of transactions per second, transaction latency, and resource utilization.
With billions of IoT devices expected in the next few years, their management is an important issue to be resolved and, while being praised in the past decades, the centralized approach of cloud computing may not be adequate at this massive scale. In this context, the introduction of blockchain technology with a distributed approach has raised a lot of hypes in solving this scalability problem. This paper proposes a blockchain-based architecture design for scalable reconfiguration of massive IoT devices. A REST API event-based publish/subscribe mechanism is used to decouple the IoT devices from the blockchain operations for reducing resource utilization. Moreover, smart contracts, reconfiguration workflows are developed to facilitate the blockchain-based update process. To evaluate the feasibility and performance of the proposed architecture, a proof-of-concept testbed has been developed. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed architecture is capable of providing a scalable solution for delivering on-demand configuration changes with a negligible effect on the resource utilization on IoT devices.
We present models that utilize smart contracts and interledger mechanisms to\nprovide decentralized authorization for constrained IoT devices. The models\ninvolve different tradeoffs in terms of cost, delay, complexity, and privacy,\nwhile exploiting key advantages of smart contracts and multiple blockchains\nthat communicate with interledger mechanisms. These include immutably recording\nhashes of authorization information and policies in smart contracts, resilience\nthrough the execution of smart contract code on all blockchain nodes, and\ncryptographically linking transactions and IoT events recorded on different\nblockchains using hash and time-lock mechanisms. The proposed models are\nevaluated on the public Ethereum testnets Rinkeby and Ropsten, in terms of\nexecution cost (gas), delay, and reduction of data that needs to be sent to the\nconstrained IoT devices.\n
Olamide Jogunola, Mohammad Hammoudeh, Bamidele Adebisi, Kelvin Anoh
Blockchain (BC) is becoming a key technology in securing future businesses and economic competition around the world. It is seen as an enabler for trust and security in the growing sharing economy. In this study, we demonstrate the application of BC to energy peer-to-peer (P2P) trading in smart grid. A smart contract for managing trust and transactions is designed and implemented for a use case in energy P2P trading on IBM platform using hyperledger composer. In addition, current challenges that could be faced when implementing BC for securing energy P2P trading are investigated and discussed.
The effect of counterfeiting on smart phone sales worldwide is estimated at 184 million units, valued at 45.3 billion EUR or 12.9 % of total sales. The mobile phone counterfeiting, in addition to its economic impact, has serious security, privacy, and even general safety concerns. The proliferation of Smart Phones devices is on the rise, where the number of smart phone devices shipped in 2017 has surpassed 1.5 billion devices and it is has reached around 1.2 billion devices by end of Q3 2018. Most of those devices are attached to different mobile networks operated around the globe, and the challenges arising is how those devices' identities are maintained and verified in addition to how the supply chain actors in smart phones industry can ensure the access to device identity throughout the device life cycle with less control from third parties. Blockchain as a distributed ledger technology positions itself as a suitable candidate to address this challenge. That is mainly attributed to Blockchain's use of cryptographic identifiers, records immutability, and provenance. These features, together, provide a platform to implement the functions of smart phone identity management functions in a global and decentralized environment. This paper presents a the use of a decentralized identity management framework to implement a system for Smart Phone Anti-Counterfeiting that eliminates the need for a central authority and provides the features of identity creation and transfer of ownership, along with the capability of fast and secure reporting of stolen and lost devices that takes effect in the shortest time. The work is implemented using a set of solidity of smart contracts deployed on a private Ethereum Blockchain.
Koosha Mohammad Hossein, Mohammad Esmaeili, Tooska Dargahi, Ahmad Khonsari
Since the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT), e-health has become one of the main research topics. Due to the sensitivity of patient data, preserving the privacy of patients appears to be challenging. In healthcare applications, patient data are usually stored in the cloud, which makes it difficult for the users to have enough control over their data. However, due to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it is the data subject's right to know where and how his data has been stored, who can access his data and to what extent. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based architecture for e-health applications which provides an efficient privacy-preserving access control mechanism. We take advantage of Blockchain (BC) special features, i.e., immutability and anonymity of users, while modifying the classic blockchain structure in order to overcome its challenges in IoT applications (i.e., low throughput, high overhead and latency). To this end, we cluster the miners of BC, store and process data at the nearest cluster to the patient. While our proposal is a work in progress, we provide a security analysis of our proposed architecture.