Nowadays, achieving strong accountability for two or more parties that interact each other within heterogeneous and distributed business processes using a trustable and decentralised approach has become a very important issue. In this paper a solution is proposed that consists of an IT infrastructure which uses blockchain and digital identity technologies as the building blocks. In particular, the notion of accountability node, a special case of blockchain 3.0 masternode, is identified as the key element of the devised infrastructure which acts as the main interface to cooperating services and relieves the users from the burden of having to directly interact with the blockchain.
The software-defined network implements the separation of software and hardware, as well as a programmable network. however, the lack of consistent records of network data poses difficulties for network management, and heterogeneous device heterogeneity poses a hindrance to software-defined network interoperability. This paper summarizes the development status and existing problems of software-defined network, proposes a softwaredefined network data chain based on blockchain, realizes distributed consistent record of software-defined network data, and breaks the multi-vendor device isolation for fault recovery. Reduce the cost of network failure recovery and achieve unified scheduling of business capabilities.
B Dinesh, B. Kavya, Dudekula Sivakumar, Mohammed Riyaz Ahmed
While the question of blockchain strengthening the IoT is raised, the conformance test of 5G for blockchain applications becomes inevitable, since 5G is an enabler of IoT. Blockchain demands point-to-point communication to have transaction and 5G is best suited for such LOS communication. The convergence of technological, economic and environmental forces, are driving the 5G and blockchain simultaneously, then each drives the other forward. Be it the 5G driving blockchain or vice-versa, the continued expansion of each is good for the other. The complete suitability of 5G for blockchain applications is yet to be conducted. In this paper, we bring out the individual attributes and expectations of 5G and blockchain and carry out a study on how both can complement each other. The study encompasses how well communication constraints in blockchain is resolved by 5G communication and how the security and privacy issues in 5G are resolved by blockchain. The research we did in the blockchain and 5G, as well as mmWave communication and MIMO technologies, evoke visions of a vast network of connected devices balancing and securing in a deeply connected world. The proliferation of blockchain enabled 5G (or 5G enabled blockchain) will open up new frontiers of services and applications for next-generation communication systems.
The blockchain technology is complex and involves a wide range of fields, which leads to the lack of uniform specifications for the development of blockchain applications. Although blockchain used to be divided according to the decentralized degree by some organizations, which are difficult to give developers specific guidance and results. To this end, this paper proposed a feature-oriented classification method of blockchain applications based on the analysis and comparison of current typical blockchain applications and frameworks, including digital currency blockchain, development platform blockchain, decentralized application and extended blockchain, helping developer create blockchain applications of a targeted manner and clarifying the functional architecture of different types of above various blockchain applications. Finally, the above classification method has been verified by the analysis of an extended blockchain.
The need for sensors to deliver, communicate, collect, alert, and share information in various applications has made wireless sensor networks very popular. However, due to its limited resources in terms of computation power, battery life and memory storage of the sensor nodes, it is challenging to add security features to provide the confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Blockchain technology ensures security and avoids the need of any trusted third party. However, applying Blockchain in a resource-constrained wireless sensor network is a challenging task because Blockchain is power, computation, and memory hungry in nature and demands heavy bandwidth due to control overheads. In this paper, a new routing and a private communication Blockchain framework is designed and tested with Constant Bit rate (CBR). The proposed Load Balancing Multi-Hop (LBMH) routing shares and enhances the battery life of the Cluster Heads and reduce control overhead during Block updates, but due to limited storage and energy of the sensor nodes, Blockchain in sensor networks may never become a reality unless computation, storage and battery life are readily available at low cost.
Dominik Schmelz, Karl Pinter, Stefan Strobl, Lei Zhu · 6 authors
When it comes to waste management and waste tracking, the main objectives are: prevent and reuse as much waste as possible. In the last decade, there has been a strong shift from the disposal of waste to recycling thereof. Within the EU, EU member states are required to establish waste prevention programs through the "Waste Framework EU Directive" which attempts to turn the EU into a recycling society. Similar endeavors also exist in other countries and regions. With globalization, the disposal of waste became a lucrative business case, often without transparency whether the waste has been disposed of properly and according to regulations or directives installed by each country. Waste flow management is the basis of sustainable waste prevention and recycling. Short-term solutions and financial profit accelerated malpractice in waste disposal and recycling. The currently used systems cannot track waste across borders in a transparent, but data-protected and tamper-proof way. Therefore, solutions to address these concerns have to be found and implemented. Blockchain enables new approaches, especially in ecosystems with distrust in every participating stakeholder, which is the case in waste flow tracking. We introduce and discuss a novel solution for waste tracking, on the basis of blockchain technology and smart contracts, that fulfills the aforementioned requirements.
Blockchains offer an interesting solution to some of the security challenges encountered in military applications. They are particularly attractive in the scenarios, where it is difficult or even impossible to establish a common root of trust, e.g., in the context of civil-military collaboration, where military organizations need to build trusted information exchange infrastructure with various types of civilian governmental and non-governmental organizations, local communities, commercial companies and private persons. In our work, we discuss how blockchain can be used to store metadata describing information collected from the IoT devices owned by the federation members as well as crowdsourced from sensors belonging to private users. We present a high level architecture for a metadata binding solution using blockchains compliant with STANAG 4774 and 4778. We also describe a concrete technical solution based on Hyperledger Fabric and some of the open issues.
With the development of smart vehicles and computation-intensive vehicular applications, it is a challenge to maintain high performance for vehicles with scarce local computational resources. Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is a computing paradigm with high potential to improve vehicular services by offloading computation-intensive tasks to the MEC servers. However, as the computational resources of MEC servers are limited, parking lots (PLs) having abundant idle computational resources should be utilized. We introduce a new computing paradigm, named by Vehicular Parked-Edge Computing (VPEC). We formulate a three-stage contract-stackelberg offloading incentive mechanism to describe this problem. The PLs are classified into different types according to their idle computational resources, and parking lot agent (PLA) offers different contracts to different types of PLs. The optimal problem is designed to maximize the utilities of vehicles, operator and PLA. We use backward induction method to solve this three-stage problem, and give the closed-form expressions of the optimal strategies for each stage. Simulation results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed incentive mechanism and reveal the changing trend of optimal strategies in each stage when traffic density changes.
This paper concentrates on the Design of Parameterizable Implementation of SHA-256 algorithm in FPGA imparting Blockchain Concepts. SHA-256 is the key principle utilized in Blockchain architecture to impart security and privacy into a system. This one way hash function generates unique output for a given input ensuring data authenticity and non- repudiation. Blockchain technology is gaining popularity in the Internet world due to its property of decentralization. Through this implementation, main goal is to introduce this new technology into VLSI domain for securing hardware digital system designs and SOC's(System On Chip). The proposed methodology enables any bit length input message to get converted to fixed length message digest known as Hash. The design for the proposed architecture was simulated in Modelsim and synthesized in Xilinx Vivado Design Suite using Artix 7 FPGA.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
The use of Cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) in monitoring the dam site will offer many benefits. In fact, it is very requisite to periodically monitor the quality and level of water in the reservoir and the weather conditions to predict the input flow into the reservoir. Moreover, it is crucial to monitor the dam structure to acquire health and safety condition of the dam infrastructure in real time and prevent the occurrence of events. In this paper, we propose a system architecture composed of a sensor cloud and an UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) cloud designed for the surveillance of a dam site. The sensor cloud provides various sensing data and the UAV cloud collects these data and delivers them to the dam monitoring center (DMC). Our system is based on the Blockchain (BC) technology which provides authentication, storage, data integrity, traceability of the delivery task of the UAV cloud, and payment of the entities that are responsible for the sensing and delivery tasks. A simulation is conducted to evaluate the performance of the solution.
Nowadays, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a consolidated reality. Smart homes are equipped with a growing number of IoT devices that capture more and more information about human beings lives. However, manufacturers paid little or no attention to security, so that various challenges are still in place. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to secure IoT systems that combines the concept of Security-by-Contract (S×C) with the Fog computing distributed paradigm. We define the pillars of our approach, namely the notions of IoT device contract, Fog node policy and contract-policy matching, the respective life-cycles, and the resulting S×C workflow. To better understand all the concepts of the S×C framework, and highlight its practical feasibility, we use a running case study based on a context-aware system deployed in a real smart home.
Paulo Bartolomeu, Emanuel Vieira, Joaquim Ferreira
Cyber-physical housing technology is going through a revolution, started the early 2000s and expected to continue in the years to come. In fact, according to market research reports, connected devices for smart homes will soon have the largest market share of all IoT devices. In contrast with siloed devices and applications, which until recently prevailed even in the most sophisticated dwellings, nowadays it is already possible to glimpse a complex blend of technologies seamlessly integrated to promote the residents' comfort. However, several challenges lie ahead before the technology can fully support such a visionary scenario. One of them is security, especially in scenarios encompassing low-end embedded devices. This paper describes a mechanism allowing limited resource embedded appliances to participate in a network of IoT devices secured by a distributed ledger technology named IOTA. The paper describes the devised proof-of-concept implementation and provides insight on preliminary performance results showing its feasibility.
Internet of things have many applications, one of them is smart homes. The main drawback of IoT that depends on a centralized cloud. The Blockchain approach with a decentralized technique will solve the centralized cloud approach. Smart homes have many security issues, threats, attacks, user privacy, integrity, etc. Blockchain is playing role in many IoT applications also the solution of these security problems. This paper explains the Blockchain in smart home with the main three tiers, how Blockchain can help to secure the data, transaction, also describe the security analysis in IoT smart homes.
<strong>What is Blockchain?</strong> Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology – a digital, decentralized database that records transactions across many computers so that the record cannot be altered retroactively. Cryptography can be used to verify and secure transactions and control the creation of new units of a particular cryptocurrency. The decentralized nature of blockchain implementation makes it hard to alter records, even when many computers are involved. A public blockchain is like an open ledger anyone can read or write. That's why it is more attractive than other cryptocurrencies controlled by its developers. Public blockchains usually use a Proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm. During the blockchain hype, there is often a lack of clarity regarding how it will impact the world economy. Many believers in blockchain envision a decentralized future where most things are automated, and transaction costs are reduced. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin were created to achieve this goal of decentralizing various industries, but due to their association with criminal activities, blockchain has not been fully adopted. Another issue is that blockchain is still a new technology, and few people are well versed in it. As a result, they fail to see its potential. <strong>Decentralization</strong> Decentralization in blockchain refers to the movement of control and decision-making from a centralized entity (person, organization, or group) to a dispersed network. Decentralized networks aim to lower the level of trust that users must place in one another and inhibit their capacity to assert authority or control over one another in a manner that degrades the network's functionality. The idea of decentralization is not new. When developing a technology solution, there are three basic network architectures: centralized, distributed, and decentralized. While blockchain technology frequently uses decentralized networks, a blockchain application itself cannot simply be classified as "decentralized" or "centralized." Instead, decentralization should be applied to all components of a blockchain program on a sliding scale. Greater and more equitable service can be accomplished by decentralizing the management and access to resources in an application. Decentralization often has some drawbacks, such as a decreased transaction throughput, but in most cases, these drawbacks are worth the better stability and service levels they offer. There are many benefits to decentralizing the administration of and access to resources within an application. Even if there are certain downsides to decentralization, such as a reduction in transaction throughput, in the long run, these disadvantages are outweighed by the benefits of increased service quality and stability. <strong>Distributed Ledger</strong> Distributed ledgers are databases that are shared across the network and scattered across several sites. Distributed ledgers are ledgers that have been extended around the globe and are under global control. As a result, several parties in various locations and institutions hold and restructure dispersed ledgers. <strong>Immutable Ledger</strong> In a blockchain, the term "immutable ledger" refers to any records that can't be changed. This means that you can't change data easily. This makes sure that security is pretty tight. If something is immutable, it is hard to make changes without the help of other people. With blockchain implementation, the basis of many transactions becomes an immutable ledger. This means that everyone in the network has access to a ledger that can't be altered. As a result, it is harder to commit fraud, and it provides an additional level of security. <strong>What Gives Blockchain Its Power?</strong> Let's understand how blockchain technology works. <strong>Security</strong>: Blockchain is a decentralized network. As a result, for any blockchain transaction to take place, all network members must have a consensus. A transaction cannot go through without most of the network's agreement. Therefore, <strong>blockchain implementation</strong> ensures that all transactions are protected to the highest level. <strong>Transparency</strong>: Blockchain is public, and anyone can access the network. Since blockchain technology is a decentralized system, any transaction on a blockchain network can be seen by everyone in that network. <strong>Reliability</strong>: Blockchain is a highly secured decentralized network. All nodes in the blockchain network must agree and accept any request to access any data stored there. In other words, the network highly secures any data stored in a blockchain. Since transactions are immutable, the data cannot be altered retroactively. <strong>Scalability</strong>: Blockchain technology can process large volumes of information quickly. For example, blockchain can be implemented to increase efficiency in the banking industry, especially in Africa. <strong>Accuracy:</strong> Each client account on the network has its specific and unique transaction history that can be used to profile clients. With all this data available on the blockchain, a bank can monitor client transactions and make more accurate lending decisions by generating reports based on analysis of these transactions. <strong>Privacy</strong>: The distributed nature of blockchain technology provides enhanced privacy. In a centralized system, all the data is stored on a single server. And since that server has access to all the information, it is possible to view details of any transaction on that account. This can be extremely disturbing, especially if you are one of the users accessing information needed by someone else. With blockchain implementation, even though no new data is added every time a new transaction occurs, data cannot be accessed by anyone except those authorized. <strong>Conclusion</strong> Blockchain offers a good solution for many applications requiring transparency, decentralization, integrity, and security without requiring a trusted third party. The technology can potentially disrupt many industries, including banking, payments, remittances, capital markets, asset management, insurance, and lending. However, several challenges in blockchain implementation must be addressed to realize the full potential of blockchain for different applications and use cases. At MicroAgility, Our blockchain consultants can help you understand how blockchain can be used in your business and assist you in implementing the technology. We have vast experience in adopting cutting-edge technologies in clients' businesses. We know how to implement blockchain technology based on your needs and requirements for different domains, ensuring security, confidentiality, and scalability. Our blockchain consulting services can help you choose the most suitable solution for your business and bring it to the next level with seamless implementation. <strong>MicroAgility dedicated blockchain consulting teams consist of diverse talent, including: </strong> <strong>Project Managers/Scrum Masters</strong> with extensive and hands-on expertise in Blockchain projects. <strong>Business Analysts</strong> to help you recommend ideal business requirements for blockchain solutions tailored to your needs. <strong>Software Engineers & Solution Architects</strong> to help build a custom architecture of blockchain solutions for your business <strong>UX Designers </strong>to design user-friendly, state-of-the-art digital interfaces for your blockchain platforms and applications. <strong>Blockchain Developers/Quality Engineers</strong> to develop customized blockchain applications and platforms. Contact us today to hire blockchain consultants and learn more about our services.
Measurement of energy especially electricity consumption becomes an issue in big cities. Electricity usage monitoring is becoming more crucial and there is a need for the instant view of active energy usage. Solutions like smart grids are possible. Smart grids give a view in macro-level, there is also a need of a micro-level view. We mean a small region's or customer's usage when we mean micro-level view. The privacy of the personal data and the user's trust in the system should also be considered in these scenarios. This study aims to propose such an alternative system which uses blockchain technology and Internet of Things (IoT) devices for the metering and billing of the customer for the electric network. The trust and privacy issues are aimed to be solved. Blockchain can provide safer and more transparent solutions with its decentralized structure. Raspberry Pi is used to simulate metering, Hyperledger Fabric is selected as a blockchain system. A scalable and energy efficient energy tracking system with blockchain and IoT devices is proposed. A prototype system is formed and the possible usage scenario is simulated on the prototype.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
S. Madumidha, P. Siva Ranjani, S. Sree Varsinee, P.S. Sundari
In the modern society, where the technologies are rapidly flourishing, the contribution of the supply chain is still at its beginning stage. Supply chain is the network of distributing the raw materials, processing it through intermediate and utilized by consumers. The traditional supply chain logistics pattern is more lenient and it faces the consequences like non-transparent in nature, interference etc. this cannot match the demands of the trade. Blockchain technology is a distributed network of data. This technology provides tamper-proof data with strong authentication where the information about all the products are encrypted. The blockchain technology is united with the Internet of Things to provide the increased transparency and efficient supply chain. In this paper it is demonstrated about the blockchain with IoT in the area of supply chain with its pros and cons.
In smart city technologies we have witnessed advanced technological improvements in small computing devices, which can be connected to the Internet and named as Internet of Thing (IoT) devices, and cooperatively working complex systems. With this increased use of new technologies, the security problem is becoming more and more important because complex systems lead to unpredictable security vulnerabilities, which result in financial and private information losses. As a recently emerged technology, Blockchain was emerged as an alternative solution to security breaches of a different application environment. In contrast to the central structure used by most systems, it is preferred especially in the area of security by its distributed structure and the cryptographic hash algorithm it uses. Today, structures such as Smart Home, Smart City, Smart Environment and Smart Agriculture, which are created by using IoT are seen as active research areas with more security shortages. The reason for the security weakness in these areas arises from the hardware restriction on the IoT devices used. In the proposed system, an authorization system for IoT devices has been tried to be set up by using the distributed node structure of Blockchain system and blocks kept in these nodes. UDP (User Datagram Protocol), which uses a simple communication model without establishing a connection to the minimum protocol mechanism for communication of nodes in the system, was preferred. The communication between the nodes has been encrypted using encryption methods, thus creating a secure environment.
Khalid AlJemy, Mohammed Alanazi, Mohammed AlSofiry, Adeel Baig
Internet of Things (IoT) is the new technology that will change the Internet era in the coming years. IoT can be used in many fields, such as digitally connected factories, facility management, production flow management inventory management, safety, security, health care, logistics, supply chain optimization, and so on. However, due to limited capabilities in IoT, it is impractical to implement extensive security solutions. Also, security standards for IoT are not mature enough. As a result, many security incidents affect IoT reliability. In this paper, we propose an effective security mechanisms that can be implemented to ensure data accuracy and integrity of IoT devices along with considering its limited hardware resources. We implement Blockchain in IoT to enhance IoT security. We apply our approach using the Ethereum protocol by having multiple Raspberry Pi devices connected as peers to the Blockchain. Also, we discuss the implementation and the expected outcome of this project, which is to implement the Access Control List mechanism using Blockchain to improve the overall IoT security and to connect IoT devices to Ethereum as light nodes.
The emergence of Internet-of-Things (IoT) has attracted a massive response from different stakeholders including industry, academia and research community due to the wide range of applications it provides. IoT enables devices with storage, computation and communication capabilities to connect to the Internet, thus providing various applications such as smart transportation, smart healthcare, smart industry, logistics and smart homes, to name a few. Since, IoT devices generates sensitive information, therefore, security is an important issue in IoT networks. Recently, Blockchain (BC) is proposed as a revolutionary technology which can be integrated within IoT to provide desired level of security and privacy. However, the integration of BC within IoT networks is extremely challenging. The major contribution of this study is three-fold. (1) Firstly, we proposed a tier-based architecture “Blockchain in Internet-of-ThingS (BITS)” which can support BC within IoT networks. (2) Secondly, we highlighted various applications of BC in IoT networks, and (3) Lastly, we provided various challenges and future research directions in the realization of BC in IoT networks.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Abdullah Bin Masood, Hassaan Khaliq Qureshi, Syed Muhammad Danish, Marios Lestas
Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) comprise of a network of physically distributed embedded sensors and actuators equipped with computational and communication capability. In CPS, Internet of Things (IoT) devices communicate in a trustless environment as the data can be compromised due to the centralized database, limited power and computational constraints. At the same time, reliability and resiliency are key concerns in CPS in the face of unforeseen circumstances, often emanating from disaster based failures. In this paper, critical issues of centralized database security in CPS are addressed via a distributed blockchain based solution. The proposed system encompasses a smart contract based framework in Ethereum blockchain. It further explores the potential of blockchain in securing and offering a distributed network for the CPS in a closed loop manner. To demonstrate the realizability of the proposed framework, a testbed implementation for the proposed idea is provided. A desktop computer, a laptop, a simple temperature sensor and a Light Emitting Diode (LED) are interfaced in a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network using Ethereum. The speedy transaction of sensor data in the blockchain at various difficulty levels and actuation through smart contracts enhance the usability of the platform for CPS and various IoT applications.
Security presents a significant challenge for the implementation and the realization of IoT scenarios. Its requirements include data confidentiality, authentication, access control as well as privacy and trust among things and services. To evaluate entities trustworthiness, exchanging trust information is crucial to reach an accurate assessment. Secure sharing and storage of trust information is essential for its confidentiality, integrity and privacy. In this context, our objective is to propose a secure trust management system based on the blockchain technology so that we can take advantages of security features it provides regarding reliability, traceability and information integrity. Blockchain based trust management can provide tamper proof data, enable a more reliable trust information integrity verification, and help to enhance its privacy and availability during sharing and storage. For this purpose, we design and implement a blockchain based trust architecture to collect trust evidences, to define a trust score for each device and to securely store and share them with other devices within the network by embedding them into blockchain transactions. Results from performance evaluation demonstrate that our proposal provides security features including tamper-proof and attacks resiliency, reliability in addition to a low complexity for IoT scenarios and applications.
The growing demand for human-independent comfortable lifestyle has emboldened the development of smart home. A typical keenly intellective home includes many Internet of things contrivances that engender processes and immensely colossal data to efficiently handle its users’ demands. This incrementing demand raises a plethora of concern cognate to a smart home system in terms of scalability, efficiency, and security. All these issues are tedious to manage, and the existing studies lack the granularity for surmounting them. Considering such a requisite of security and efficiency as a quandary at hand, this article presents a secure and efficient smart home architecture, which incorporates the blockchain and the cloud computing technologies for a cumulated solution. Because of the decentralized nature of blockchain technology, it can serve the processing services and make the transaction copy of the collected sensible user data from smart home. To ensure the security of smart home network, our proposed model utilizes the multivariate correlation analysis technique to analyze the network traffic and identify the correlation between traffic features. We have evaluated the performance of our proposed architecture using different parameters like throughput and discovered that blockchain is an efficient security solution for the future Internet of things network.
The electronic authentication system authenticates the documents electronically using the blockchain technology, which enables us to implement an integrated system of official documents of all kinds for Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan. This technology allows us to build a robust database system that cannot be tampered with, modified, destroyed or altered. It further ensures the safety of documents issued within the University departments and those exported or deported outside the University system; such as, financial documents, official documents and academic certificates. Moreover, this system guarantees us a very high level of data and information security and confidentiality. Our system will be built using a database that provides 100% true information about the exports of that system. This technology will help users prevent the forgery of the data and official documents issued by the University of Al-Zaytoonah, both internally and externally, and also enables the departments within the University to issue documents to third parties while ensuring confirmed, undeniable delivery and sound content.
The Bitcoin blockchain is a secure, distributed ledger that enables trusted transactions across untrusted entities. However, many applications need much faster transaction confirmation than that of the current Bitcoin blockchain. In this paper, we present a high-throughput, low-latency, deterministic confirmation mechanism called ACCEL for accelerating Bitcoin's block confirmation mechanism. Our key idea for achieving faster confirmation is the quick identification of singular blocks that provably belong to the blockchain. While it is impossible to determine with certainty if a block belongs to a blockchain when network delays are unbounded, singular block detection exploits the fact that the end-to-end latency between Bitcoin miners is substantially lower than the inter-block spacing and can be assumed to be upper bounded. ACCEL is especially suitable for low-latency, permissioned blockchains, where the block spacing can be optimized to the blockchain's small latencies to greatly improve throughput. We evaluate ACCEL's performance with extensive simulations and with a real implementation built with minimal changes to and fully compatible with the Bitcoin blockchain. We show that with appropriate bounds on the end-to-end latency, it is possible to reduce transaction confirmation latencies to milliseconds with ACCEL, and so meet the performance needs of a wide range of applications.