Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Readers' capability to consider and assess sources is imperative. Digital preservation efforts, however, mostly neglected citation provenance, which is a necessity for transparent source verification. We therefore present Webchain, a new system enabling verifiable citations and references on the World Wide Web. Its architecture combines a distributed ledger with secure timestamping to ensure history of creation, ownership, and referential integrity of online resources. With Webchain, readers can independently detect content manipulation by verifying authenticity, integrity, and time consistency. At the same time, authors gain a proof of existence for referenced articles. Web-chain extends a well-known distributed timestamping scheme to handle an open and dynamic network topology by providing a solution for membership management. We examine the security of our approach, particularly regarding forging attacks. Our results show that we are able to render such attacks infeasible, even in the face of a powerful attacker.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Enabling keyword search directly over the data stored on the blockchain is a desirable technique that can help in the effective utilization of the data while preserving the privacy. Searchable Encryption (SE) is a well-known technique that allows search queries over the encrypted Cloud data, however, existing solutions are based on the assumption of the Cloud Server being “trusted-but-curious” or “honest-but-curious”. This leads to a compelling case to use permissioned blockchain technology to ensure greater levels of security when the Cloud Server is malicious. The amalgamation of SE and permissioned blockchain empowers a client to place complete trust on the Cloud Server and the services it has to offer. This paper presents a novel privacy - preserving framework to facilitate keyword search over encrypted data stored on the blockchain network. The framework for the first time studies SE over a permissioned blockchain network i.e., Hyperledger-Fabric. The SE scheme is privacy-preserving as it is based on probabilistic trapdoors. As a result the framework guarantees prominent security and privacy gains.
In this paper, we propose a new authentication method to prevent authentication vulnerability of Claim Token method of Membership Service provide in Private BlockChain. We chose Hyperledger Fabric v1.0 using JWT authentication method of membership service. TOTP, which generate OTP tokens and user authentication codes that generate additional time-based password on existing authentication servers, has been applied to enforce security and two-factor authentication method to provide more secure services.
Matteo Signorini, Matteo Pontecorvi, Waël Kanoun, Roberto Di Pietro
Anomaly detection tools play a role of paramount importance in protecting networks and systems from unforeseen attacks, usually by automatically recognizing and filtering out anomalous activities. In this paper we present ADvISE: the first Anomaly Detection tool for blockchaIn SystEms which leverages blockchain meta-data, named forks, in order to collect potentially malicious requests in the network/system while being resilient to eclipse attacks. ADvISE collects and analyzes malicious forks to build a threat database that enables detection and prevention of future attacks.
Based on the principles of universality and equality and the guideline of integrality, the Brazilian Public Healthcare System, called Unified Health System (SUS), was constituted as a regionalized and hierarchical services network. There is the recognizing of interdependence between municipalities and between levels of government to guarantee the provision of services. The Union and the states share with the municipalities the responsibility for guaranteeing the constitutional right of access to health goods and services in the country, increasing the requirement for actions cooperation and coordination between the three levels of government. To respond to these questions, intergovernmental relations have undergone progressive transformations since the creation of the system. Recently, in a context of reducing federal social spending, the demand for lesser Union regulation has increased, with changes in federal funds allocation. In the light of the institutional trajectory of the last three decades, as well as the literature on decentralization in health and federalism and social policies, the text has the aim of analyzing the change occurred in 2017 in the form of federal transfers in the SUS. Considering these contributions, the study stresses that the results of decentralization may be negative for efficiency in management and for equity in access to health services. It also emphasizes the relevance of coordination arrangements and mechanisms to improve the health policy outcome and effectiveness in system management. Analyzing the worsening of the financing of the SUS, with a probable reduction of the participation of the Union in the allocation of health resources due to the freezing of its minimum application by EC 95, the study points to the risk of transferring greater responsibilities to states and municipalities, already undermined by underfunding in the health area. Consequently, this changing can cause a reduction in the coordination capacity of the system, a loss of effectiveness, an increase in competition and fragmentation, and an increase in the inequality of access to health goods and services in the country.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Andreas Grüner, Alexander Mühle, Tatiana Gayvoronskaya, Christoph Meinel
Removing the need for a trusted third party, blockchain technology revolutionizes the field of identity management. Service providers rely on digital identities to securely identify, authenticate and authorize users to their services. Traditionally, these digital identities are offered by a central identity provider belonging to a specific organisation. Trust in the digital identity mainly originates from the identity provider's reputation, organizational functioning and contractual obligations. Blockchain technology enables the creation of decentralized identity management without a central identity provider as trusted third party. Therefore, the derivation of trust in digital identities within this paradigm requires a distinct approach. In this paper we propose a novel general quantifiable trust model and a specific implementation variant for blockchain-based identity management. Applying the model, trust is deduced in a decentralized manner from attestations of claims and applied to the associated digital identity. This concept replaces trust with a central identity provider by aggregated trust into attestation issuers. Thus, promoting self-sovereign identities to be fit for purpose. The calculated numerical trust metric serves as independent basis for the definition of assurance levels to simplify and automate reasoning about trust by service providers without requiring a dedicated evaluation of a trusted third party.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Saulo dos Santos, Daniyal Khowaja, Muskan Vinayak, Ruppa K. Thulasiram · 5 authors
Cryptocurrencies especially bitcoin has received a lot of attention in the past year. The popularity has increased the volume of transactions in an unprecedented way. The time to complete a simple pairwise transaction from one virtual wallet to other takes time in proof-of-work where transactions are added into the Blockchain. At the same time, validating a pairwise transaction is very significant in this new technology as a payment option. Through this study, we propose a heuristic approach for validating pairwise transactions on cryptocurrencies. Our heuristic simulate all entities sending and receiving transactions among themselves. We use SHA256 algorithm to enhance our solution for pairwise transactions, creating a local Blockchain of transactions that has been used in the development of various Blockchain systems. For our experiments, we ran simulations in-file and in-memory with 2 million transactions in 290.39 and 5.34 seconds respectively. Our peak transactions per second was 6.887 using a file persistence version and 374.255 with in-memory version. Based on our experiments we conclude that is possible to improve the number of transactions processed per second increasing the size of the block as well as avoiding access to the file during the simulation. We also present some of our results implementing our algorithm in a parallel environment and hence show better performance.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Giovanni Di Stasi, Stefano Avallone, Roberto Canonico, Giorgio Ventre
Bitcoin is a new digital currency created with the aim of being decentralized, peer-to-peer, censorship-resistant, borderless, scarce, fast and cheap to use. Since Bitcoin main way of operating is based on broadcast communications, e.g. all transactions of the currency reach all network peers, how to achieve scalability is one of the most important concerns for it to achieve wide usage. One of the proposals to improve its scalability takes the form of the Lightning Network (LN) which consists of an overlay network on top of the base Bitcoin layer. Such an overlay allows to perform a new kind of off-blockchain transactions, i.e. transactions not broadcast to the entire network, that, differently from previous off-blockchain solutions, do not require to put trust in any third entity. Important open problems of the LN are i) defining how payments should be routed and ii) establishing which fee policies intermediate nodes should apply for forwarding payments. The contributions of this work are twofold: we first propose a new, more general, way for nodes to apply fees for forwarding payments which allows to keep the network balanced and improve its performance in the long term. Secondly, we propose a new multipath routing payment scheme, based on the atomic multipath payment method, which is able to significantly reduce the fees paid by users, while being fast and also able to keep the network balanced.
Blockchain is one of the most hyped technologies of recent years. It promises to restructure the way applications are developed and to replace the widely client-server model used today. While the technology is promising the ecosystem of tools and development methodologies are still in their early stages. In this paper a proof of concept blockchain application is developed, regarding the exchange of data between different universities in different countries, with respect to the Erasmus program. A decentralized application has been designed from ground up and is proposed to be installed in multiple nodes located in all participating universities. Ethereum platform has been chosen and the required smart contracts have been implemented. Additionally an easy to use web interface have been developed in order to be usable for end users. We have evaluated both the development process and the efficiency of the resulting implementation.
Long Finance's Eternal Coin research programme has produced this report entitled “On-line Simulation For Cryptocurrencies: Risk Control Framework”.
Cryptocurrency development has been an exciting area for several years, with many new ideas coming forward and still the potential of a new launch that solves the biggest technical and commercial challenges. However, to date, almost all the 1,500+ cryptocurrencies that have been launched have died away, and even Bitcoin has serious technical limitations that have prevented it from being a competitive payment system in most situations. Cryptocurrencies have been seriously impacted by technical problems, disagreements, fraud, hacks, competition, regulation, lack of popularity, apathy, and sheer incompetence.
To increase the odds of success, those who aspire to a successful cryptocurrency need to think through the challenges they may face, make plans, make design choices, and develop capabilities that help them survive. They need control frameworks, practices, and procedures to create business value and minimize risk. While boring, intellectually these are tough and need to respond to the special characteristics of cryptocurrencies. This report looks at the control needs of cryptocurrencies mainly from the perspective of their creators and regulators (such as they are so far). The objective is to make recommendations on controls for cryptocurrencies that are not too prescriptive, but more helpful than generic control frameworks such as COSO’s frameworks for internal control and enterprise risk management (Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission 2013, 2017), and variations on them (e.g. Basel Committee on Banking Regulation 1998, Financial Reporting Council 2014).
This initial report complements previous Long Finance work on governance, audit, and standards for smart ledger systems. It also reflects the focus of the Eternal Coin research programme, a global discussion on the nature of money and the concept of value over the long term.”
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Emmanuelle Anceaume, Antoine Guellier, Romaric Ludinard
The presence of forks in permissionless blockchains is a recurrent issue. So far this has been handled either a posteriori, through local arbitration rules (e.g., “keep the branch which has required the most computational power”)which are applied once a fork is present in the blockchain, or a priori, via a Byzantine resilient agreement protocol periodically invoked by a committee of well identified and online nodes. In the former case, local arbitration rules guarantee that if they are correctly applied by a majority of users, then with high probability forks are progressively resolved, while in the latter case, the sequence of Byzantine resilient agreements decide on the unique sequence of blocks to be appended to the blockchain. The question we may legitimately ask is the following one: To prevent the period of uncertainty inherent to optimistic-based solutions, are we doomed to rely on the decisions made by a unique committee whose members are already actively involved in the creation of blocks? We negatively answer this question by presenting a solution that combines the best features of optimistic and pessimistic approaches: we leverage the presence of Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO)owners and “the public-key as identities” principle to make UTXO owners (i.e. users)self-organize in small Byzantine resilient committees “around” each new object (i.e., blocks and transactions)to decide on their validity. Validated objects are conflict-free, which guarantees the absence of blockchain forks and allows for fast-payment transactions facility. This is achieved without fearing Sybil attacks and selfish mining attacks. We are not aware of any solutions enjoying such features.
Distributed Ledger Technologies have triggered business model innovation activities among firms. While the available design choices are limited by the unique properties of any protocol, management research so far has neglected the architectural differences between the dominant protocol types. In this study, I analyse the business model design elements of firms seeking to utilise the IOTA Tangle as their underlying DLT protocol for innovation. I identify two potential business model patterns the IOTA Tangle facilitates that is a by-demand logic and the monetisation of data stream. I further find that the IOTA protocol is integrated into open or closed platforms.
Summary This paper investigates what are referred to as ‘open information transactions’. Such transactions are in contrast to traditional transactions, where typically two parties to a transaction are the only ones with information about the transaction. For example, in a sale, the seller and the purchaser typically are the only ones with information about the transaction. However, some emerging technologies, such as blockchain accounting, supply chain social media, and hashtag commerce are making information about the transactions potentially openly available to others. This paper investigates some of the implications and strategies that include the use of that open information. For example, open information in accounting and supply chain transactions provides the potential for both business intelligence analysis of the information and possibly misleading and illusory transactions, analogous to those that have garnered the recent attention of the Justice Department in cryptocurrencies. Finally, this paper suggests that blockchain transaction processing will provide reliable information in those settings where there is a “single truth” feed of information flow for the phenomena of interest, no ability to do off‐blockchain transactions (or a large penalty cost) and limitation to a single identity for each enterprise on the blockchain.
Information and communication technology has been a positive dynamic force behind improving performance. Simultaneously enabling digital business ecosystems to become an increasingly popular concept for modelling and building distributed systems in heterogeneous, decentralized and open environments. These business solutions have created an opportunity for automated business relations and transactions as well as implementing blockchain based performance measurement systems (PMS), allowing PMS to be more advanced giving validation and verification of received data hence the indicators. This paper evaluates feasibility of blockchain based PMS for logistics industry. Today the performance of supply chain stakeholders including transport logistics is lacking transparency and restraining innovative digital improvements towards a connected, smart and efficient ecosystem. Current public blockchains are not feasible for given use case due to limited throughput, and transaction cost. In this paper we have evaluated different technological alternatives and found several new developments that make blockchain technology suitable for ensuring logistics sector performance measurement integrity. Validated indicators can add trustworthiness and visibility to management and process improvement decisions, as well as be subject to smart contracts and monetary transactions.
Financial Technology (Fintech) is one of the fastest developing industries of our time. New company structures are emerging with very innovative features. Recent examples, along with their innovative investment structures, are reflected in startup funding campaigns that use a technology called blockchain. This article targets a broad audience without getting deep into technical, economical or legal jargon. The reason for this approach is to explain the latest activities in fintech, without getting lost in all the technicalities. The authors assume that the general public struggles to keep pace with technical, legal and social media developments and that it is challenging for individuals to orient themselves in the jungle of media overload, fake news, scams and annoying trolls. This article is the second part of a Financial Technology series, discussing funding and organizational structures of new digital companies and blockchain1ventures. This is the second article following, “The Right Path to Funding Decentralized Organizations”2, where we explored the dynamics of financing startups and new entrepreneurships.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Botnets provide the foundation for a wide range of malicious activities on the Internet. Sophisticated Command and Control (C&C) infrastructures aim to prevent the detection and takedown of botnets and therefore pose a big challenge in the battle against network attacks of all kinds. In this paper, we present Chain Channels, a method for hidden botnet communication that exploits the digital signatures used in blockchains to inject subliminal messages. We show how subliminal messages can be included in signatures and distributed in blockchain transactions to the bots. We also show how the keying material required for extracting the subliminal information can be transmitted privately to the bots while being stored on a public blockchain. As proof of concept, we inject a subliminal message and a key in the Bitcoin blockchain and show how this information can be extracted from the transactions. Our method allows to establish a hidden C&C infrastructure over blockchains and send instructions to all bots without leaving any suspicious communication activities. The method relies only on digital signatures and is therefore applicable to numerous blockchains. The subliminal communication can not be distinguished from legitimate transactions, and mitigation would require redesigning blockchains to use new subliminal-free signature schemes. Our method provides a general hidden distribution channel over block chains and can be also applied to other scenarios where information needs to be transmitted covertly. It scales extremely well with the number of receivers (i.e., bots), and subliminal messages can even be distributed over different blockchains to exploit specific features of blockchains such as low transaction cost or fast confirmation times or to further obfuscate the existence of the C&C communication.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
The emerging data-driven techniques have greatly increased the demand for effective data sharing infrastructure, which is our fundamental motivation in designing effective data trade paradigms. One of the critical challenges of data sharing is to achieve a good trade-off between the privacy and data utility. To address this challenge, in this paper we exploit the Blockchain techniques and contract theory to design a Blockchain-based peer-to-peer data trading mechanism. In our proposed mechanism, the data trading is supported by Ethereum Blockhain technique. To effectively capture and regulate the complex interaction between the data aggregators (AGG) and the data owners, we propose a contract theoretic approach to design the smart contract that is the essential component of Ethereum Blockchain. The performance of our proposed Blockchain-enabled data trading mechanism is evaluated.
Rawia Bdiwi, Cyril de Runz, Sami Faïz, Arab Ali Chérif
Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain (BC) is an innovative paradigm that is gaining ground in smart environments. In intelligent classrooms, IoT makes our exchange easier with the prominent advent of smart devices, connected objects and sensors. However, the important research direction in this kind of IoT-Based Ubiquitous Learning Environment (ULE) is security and privacy that remaining essential challenges. Previously, we exposed the initial architecture of ULE based on BC technology and the educational services that can be delivered via this platform. In this paper, we investigate deeper and we highlight the main component of our ULE known as integrated IoT-ubiquitous platform using BC. The collection of data exchanged across devices is determined by the miner that preserves security using transactions that trace communications. Finally, in this study we demonstrate our preliminary experimental results that show the effectiveness of the proposed decentralized platform which is more secure by analyzing confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Barbara Carminati, Christian Rondanini, Elena Ferrari
One of the main issues in service collaborations among business partners is the possible lack of trust among them. A promising approach to cope with this issue is leveraging on blockchain technology by encoding with smart contracts the business process workflow. This brings the benefits of trust decentralization, transparency, and accountability of the service composition process. However, data in the blockchain are public, implying thus serious consequences on confidentiality and privacy. Moreover, smart contracts can access data outside the blockchain only through Oracles, which might pose new confidentiality risks if no assumptions are made on their trustworthiness. For these reasons, in this paper, we are interested in investigating how to ensure data confidentiality during business process execution on blockchain even in the presence of an untrusted Oracle.
Taiguara Melo Tupinambás, Rafael Aeraf Leao Cadence, André Lemos
Cryptocurrencies prices forecasting is a complex theme due to the chaotic market behavior and the influence of external events. Therefore, inference models should offer, in addition to a satisfying accuracy, reasonable interpretability, so that investors can decide based on their own knowledge. However, many studies in this subject focus on model accuracy and leave much to be desired in terms of simplicity and interpretability. This work proposes the use of Mamdani interpretable fuzzy inference models for forecasting cryptocurrency price variation. For that, a genetic algorithm to optimize models accuracy is employed, limiting the quantity of rules and antecedents arbitrarily. A set of infeasible rules had to be discarded, in order to generate interesting models, that produce a relevant amount of trades. Data from Kraken exchange were utilized for training, validation and results assessment. Results have shown that, for the cryptocurrencies with the highest validation performances, there are gains in comparison to the simple currency appreciation. Using the interpretable aspect of the models, it should be possible to obtain even higher profits.
Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are becoming increasingly important. They are not money but are being used by a growing group of people as a means of payment and investment. Central banks and regulatory authorities have identified risks and see a need for regulation. Regulation areas with a high priority in the EU concern consumer protection, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (CFT). The EU institutions are currently revamping the AML Directive in order to include virtual currencies for the first time. An international coordination on the regulation of virtual currencies is on the agenda of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors of G20 countries.
Real-time gross settlement system (RTGS) is the cornerstone of inter-bank payment business. Spectacular expansion of large-value wholesale payment has forced financial institutions to implement inter-bank payment systems (IBPS) with higher level of throughput, security, and stability. This promising approach to orchestrating IBPS utilizes emerging blockchain technology, which has been successfully harnessed to deliver distributed trust and confidentiality for diverse financial service applications. However, blockchain is not a silver bullet for IBPS, which faces multiple challenges incurred by high value transactions. Financial institutions expect not only a simple migration from traditional RTGS to a blockchain platform, but a decentralized system with better confidentiality, instruction settlement finality, liquidity saving mechanism, and more efficient methods of gridlock resolution. In this paper, we introduce an end-to-end IBPS prototype based on Hyperledger Fabric enterprise blockchain platform. The prototype supports gross settlement, gridlock resolution, and reconciliation for inter-bank payment business. As a preliminary research of Ubin Project, this prototype is proved to provide higher level of payment settlement service.
Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Blockchain technology is a ledger system that is popularly known as the backbone of the Bitcoin cryptocur-rency. Since its conception, the potential beneficial applications of blockchain in other digital sectors have been lauded in the literature, and related challenges have been disputed. In this study, the literature is reviewed for frameworks and use cases that fully realize the applicability of blockchain beyond financial applications and cryptocurrencies. A network analysis of the literature was performed to identify the most popularly documented digital sectors in this context, which include the Internet of Things (IoT), healthcare, supply chain management, and government sectors. For each sector, this review documents use cases in which an attempt is made to implement blockchain solutions. The main purpose of this paper is to probe each sector for the growing maturity of blockchain technology and to document the unique benefits and challenges arising from the use of this technology. The findings show that despite the growing reputation of blockchain technology, its implementation within these four sectors remains in infancy because the use cases lack concrete evaluations of its effectiveness and plausibility. Nevertheless, the categorization of current blockchain use cases demonstrates current applications and sector-specific concerns that suggest future directions for further research.