Thomas K. Dasaklis, Fran Casino, Constantinos Patsakis
Blockchain technology is rapidly gaining traction in healthcare industry as one of the most exciting technological developments. In particular, blockchain technology presents numerous opportunities for healthcare industry such as reduced transaction costs, increased transparency for regulatory reporting, efficient healthcare data management and healthcare records universality. In the context of smart health, blockchain may provide distinct benefits, particularly from a context-aware perspective where efficient and personalised solutions may be provided to citizens and the society in general. In this article, we portray the symbiotic relationship between blockchain and smart health. Among others, we identify and analyse three individual streams of possible synergies. In addition, we discuss several challenges for actually implementing blockchain-based applications in the healthcare industry along with several opportunities for future research directions.
Research related to electric vehicles (EVs) is mainly focused on hardware such as battery charging method, and there is still a lack of software (service oriented) research such as billing system that needs to be developed realistically. The result of the charge measured in the charging EV can be different from the charge amount claimed to be charged in the charging station. This is because the charge is measured separately from each other using its smart meters. And if mechanical measurements are assumed to be accurate, it is possible to lie in one of the EV or charging station. Also, billing information can be manipulated. To prevent those problems, this paper proposes the blockchain based billing system. The EV and the charging station store the billing information in the blockchain after mutual authentication and prevent the modification. A blockchain is the system in which all nodes have the same ledger, therefore cannot be tampered with. This prevents a user from modifying the record after charging.
José Barbosa, Paulo Leitão, Adriano Ferreira, Jonas Queiroz · 6 authors
This paper describes the development of a multiagent system (MAS) to support the implementation of zero-defect manufacturing strategies in multi-stage production systems. The MAS infrastructure, combined with on-line inspection tools, data analytics and knowledge generation, constitutes a suitable approach to integrate process and quality control in multi-stage environments. This will allow the early detection of product defects, the adaptation to operating condition changes and the optimisation of manufacturing processes. This type of integrated management structure is aligned with a zero-defect manufacturing production model which is of paramount importance in the actual state-of-the-art manufacturing paradigms. As a proof of concept, the devised manufacturing supervision model was deployed into an experimental multi-stage system that run a set of several tests on electrical motors. The agent-based solution was implemented using the JADE framework and the exchange of information structured by proper data models and industrial based Internet-of-Things and Machine-to-Machine technologies, such as OPC-UA, REST and JSON. The obtained results demonstrate the suitability of the devised integrated management model as a vehicle to achieve dynamic and continuous system improvement in multi-stage manufacturing environments.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - UAVs, or drones - are now being operated by several military forces and currently, to a more limited extent, by civilian organizations. These latter operations, however, may eventually expand to exceed, in number and diversity, those of the military. Further expected development in battery capacity, construction materials and software, especially regarding machine learning algorithms and drone integration, will definitely increase UAVs' autonomous. Unique risks associated with UAVs like risk of hackers' attacks to intercept the control are also increasing. More incidents likely will occur once regulations are finalized that encourage more use that is widespread. Such incidents could result in multi-million dollar claims against businesses, operators and manufacturers. Blockchain is the basis technology for cryptocurrencies. However, Blockchain can have far larger applications in the field of UAVs, because Blockchain is highly distributed and publically viewable system of sequentially linked cryptographically. This paper presents a concept of application, where each UAV in the UAVNet is a Blockchain node, has on-board functionality for creating and reading transactions from the block, as well as communication tools for exchanging transactions with other UAVs.
Internet of Things (IoTs) offers a plethora of opportunities for remote monitoring and communication of everyday objects known as things with applications in numerous domains. The advent of blockchains can be a significant enabler for IoTs towards conducting and verifying transactions in a secure manner. However, applying blockchains to IoTs is challenging due to the resource constrained nature of the embedded devices coupled with significant delay incurred in processing and verifying transactions in the blockchain. Thus there exists a need for profiling the energy consumption of blockchains for securing IoTs and analyzing energy-performance trade-offs. Towards this goal, we profile the impact of workloads based on Smart Contracts and further quantify the power consumed by different operations performed by the devices on the Ethereum platform. In contrast to existing approaches that are focused on performance, we characterize performance and energy consumption for real workloads and analyse energy-performance trade-offs. Our proposed methodology is generic in that it can be applied to other platforms. The insights obtained from the study can be used to develop secure protocols for IoTs using blockchains.
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)
Public key distribution and device authentication remain the main security challenges in many systems and applications. Existing solutions are based on Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) backed by Certificate Authorities (CA) to validate the authenticity of the devices. However, distributing and provisioning certificates for each client showed to be impractical especially for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. In this paper we propose a distributed PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) platform based on the Ethereum Blockchain. It contains a decentralized key-store that holds the public keys of all devices, and includes a generic protocol for PSK (Pre-Shared Keys) distribution. PSK keys can then be used by PSK-based security protocols (TLS-PSK, DTLS-PSK, SRTP...) for securing the communication channel between two devices. This platform includes a client-side module, a public key management module configured on the server, and a smart contract software deployed on the Ethereum Blockchain network. This generic platform can be used by many applications for client and server authentication, data integrity, and secure peer to peer communications. Moreover, this promising system may potentially eliminate the trust requirement imposed by the existing PKI/CAs infrastructure on clients.
This article intention was to set up the big picture of all 1,639 cryptocurrencies up and give a policy recommendation for Thai government. Hence, there were three following objectives as follows: 1) to investigate the state of the art of all cryptocurencies in the source of Code / Forking due to limitation of number of pages 2) to identify the best practice of cryptocurrency, and 3) to study the role of General Prayuth Chan-o-cha’s government towards cryptocurrency. Documentary research and descriptive statistics like frequency and percentage were used in this study. The findings found that there were twelve groups of qualified cryptocurrencies in CoinMarketCap, led by two well-known giant family of crypto market, Ethereum (35.5%) and Bitcoin (16.1%). Then, the best practices were on the provision of coins or tokens, twelve techniques for managing blokchain (such as Blockchainas-a Service), blocktime was between 0.03 and 30 minutes with Mean = 1.96, S.D. = 2.29 whereas TPS was between 0 - 1,400,000 with Mean = 1341.87 and S.D. = 36021.52, most of cryptocurrencies had their own Web Site (95.8%) and E-mail (78.8%), coding played a big role in cryptocurrency such as C . Last, cryptocurrency had both open and hidden-and-dark faces. In the open face, tax, law, people’s identification will be useful. In contrary to the open side, setting an autonomous public organization is one and only one solution for all cryptocentric affairs.
Leveraging the wisdom of crowd for knowledge discovery and monetization is increasingly popular nowadays. Among others, one popular way of leveraging the crowd wisdom is crowdsensing with truth discovery, which is able to discover truthful knowledge from the unreliable sensory data harvested from mobile clients. In order to become truly successful, however, a number of challenges are yet to be addressed. First, safeguarding clients' sensory data is demanded for privacy protection. Second, in many real crowdsensing applications, data are usually collected in a streaming manner, so truth discovery is naturally required to be efficiently conducted in a streaming fashion. Thirdly, knowledge monetization should be made full-fledged, endowed with features of transparency and streamlined processing while fully addressing the practical needs of parties in the monetization ecosystem. In this paper, we present our initial effort on a crowdsensing framework that enables privacy-preserving knowledge discovery and full-fledged blockchain-based knowledge monetization. Our framework enables privacy-preserving and efficient truth discovery over encrypted crowdsensed data streams for truthful knowledge discovery. Meanwhile, with careful integration of the newly emerging blockchain-based smart contract technology, our framework allows full-fledged knowledge monetization. Tackling the challenges of monetization fairness and (on-chain) knowledge confidentiality, our customized knowledge monetization design well respects the interests of knowledge seller and requester, with full support of transparency, streamlined processing, and automatic quality-aware rewards for clients. Extensive experiments on Microsoft Azure cloud and Ethereum blockchain demonstrate the practically affordable performance of our design.
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 is one type of distributed ledger technology, which comes from Bitcoin, a peer to peer electronic cash system. Its characteristics like decentralization and immutability make it possible to resolve data barrier and security problems in centralized system. In this paper, we discussed the existing problems of advanced manufacturing and several advantages while applying blockchain. Then we proposed a blockchain model for industrial internet based on well-known blockchain system such as bitcoin ethereum and hyperledger fabric. After that, we gave the workflow for a personalized service in this blockchain model.
Yan Zhu, Yao Qin, Zhiyuan Zhou, Xiaoxu Song · 6 authors
Digital asset management (DAM) has increasing benefits in booming global Internet economy, but it is still a great challenge for providing an effective way to manage, store, ingest, organize and retrieve digital asset. To do it, we present a new digital asset management platform, called DAM-Chain, with Transaction-based Access Control (TBAC) which integrates the distribution ABAC model and the blockchain technology. In this platform, the ABAC provides flexible and diverse authorization mechanisms for digital asset escrowed into blockchain while the blockchain's transactions serve as verifiable and traceable medium of access request procedure. We also present four types of transactions to describe the TBAC access control procedure, and provide the algorithms of these transactions corresponding to subject registration, object escrowing and publication, access request and grant. By maximizing the strengths of both ABAC and blockchain, this platform can support flexible and diverse permission management, as well as verifiable and transparent access authorization process in an open decentralized environment.
SUMMARY A perennial challenge in the accounting profession is how to aggregate and share instances of practitioner misconduct among numerous relevant parties. At present, both the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) offer solutions for centralized collection of misconduct, but both likely experience issues with incomplete reporting from key constituents. I propose a novel use of blockchain technology to address this issue, such that all key parties in the accounting profession leverage an accountancy blockchain to aggregate and share instances of practitioner misconduct across the country on a nearly real-time basis. Such a network creates an immutable record of misconduct and allows key constituents in the accounting profession to work together and share information as peers without the risk of one party taking control of the ledger. I close by discussing blockchain-specific roadblocks to realizing this proposed model.
Blockchain has enormous potential to advance modern services, but it is important to remember that no new technology succeeds with the rip-and-replace method. Organizations using this technology will have a greater impact if they augment existing, well-established technologies such as electronic data interchange (EDI) systems.
There is surge of interest to the blockchain technology not only in the scientific community but in the business community as well. Proof of Work (PoW) and Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) are the two main classes of consensus protocols that are used in the blockchain consensus layer. PoW is highly scalable but very slow with about 7 (transactions/second) performance. BFT based protocols are highly efficient but their scalability are limited to only tens of nodes. One of the main reasons for the BFT limitation is the quadratic $O(n^2)$ communication complexity of BFT based protocols for $n$ nodes that requires $n \times n$ broadcasting. In this paper, we present the {\em Musch} protocol which is BFT based and provides communication complexity $O(f n + n)$ for $f$ failures and $n$ nodes, where $f < n/3$, without compromising the latency. Hence, the performance adjusts to $f$ such that for constant $f$ the communication complexity is linear. Musch achieves this by introducing the notion of exponentially increasing windows of nodes to which complains are reported, instead of broadcasting to all the nodes. To our knowledge, this is the first BFT-based blockchain protocol which efficiently addresses simultaneously the issues of communication complexity and latency under the presence of failures.
Relationships of parent and subsidiary (one corporation owns all or a controlling amount of stock in another) and common ownership (the same individual, entity, or cohesive group owns a controlling interest in a number of corporations) create what are commonly referred to as corporate groups or affiliated corporations. Laws in numerous fields, including, of course, corporate law, as well as bankruptcy,1 civil procedure,2 tax,3 financial reporting,4 antitrust,5 employment,6 bank regulation,7 and the like, confront issues raised by corporate groups. An attempt to present the law governing corporate groups in the United States covering all these fields is hampered by the fact that there is no cohesive law of corporate groups in the United States. Each area of law has its own definition of the ties between corporations necessary to trigger various rules. In some instances, as for example with the corporate laws protecting minority shareholders or creditors, triggering rules relevant to parent or controlling shareholder status involves a fact-intense, case-by-case evaluation of actual control over the board or company.8 In other instances, as for example under the Internal Revenue Code provisions entitling affiliated corporations to file consolidated federal income tax returns,9 statutes set bright-line numerical tests based upon ownership of a set percentage of voting power and value of stock by one corporation in another.10 Moreover, the impact of triggering rules applicable to groups of companies in any given area of law depends upon the particular rule and area of law involved. Hence, allowing affiliated corporations to file consolidated income tax returns does not mean the corporations are liable for each other’s debts. Nor, given the disparate concerns and policies raised by corporate groups in these different areas of law, should the same criteria or impacts necessarily apply. The lack of any cohesive law of corporate groups in the United States means that attempting to cover the treatment of corporate groups under all of the various potentially relevant laws in the United States would entail either writing a treatise11 or settling for an unhelpful exercise in superficiality. Accordingly, this Report takes a narrower approach, which focuses on two central challenges presented by corporate groups. A minimum goal for corporate law is to prevent parties controlling a corporation from misappropriating the company’s earnings and assets (“tunneling”12) or otherwise taking advantage of minority shareholders. The often-abused power of parents and controlling shareholders to exploit subsidiaries and controlled corporations in corporate groups and the minority shareholders in such companies create particular hazards in this regard. A second minimum goal for corporate law is to prevent the abuse of limited liability through tunneling, deception of creditors, and excessive externalization of risk. Again, corporate groups, with their prospect for isolating liabilities in some companies in the group and assets in others, create particular hazards in this regard. These two concerns provide the focus for this Report. Unlike the law in some nations, corporate laws in the United States—which are largely state, not federal, law, and consist of corporation statutes and judicially developed (common law) doctrines—generally do not have statutory provisions or judicial doctrines designed especially for corporate groups. In terms of corporate governance, this means that parent corporations and controlling shareholders have no specific authority to on or their subsidiaries or controlled corporations. their power as a of their voting control over the on the subsidiary or controlled board of which has the statutory power to the this same lack of specific provisions for corporate groups, corporate in the United States minority shareholders and from the by corporate groups through the of to shareholders in parent corporations from through statutes in the United States subsidiaries from voting stock own in their parent companies and other controlling shareholders in corporate groups a of corporate earnings and assets to the of minority shareholders through with the corporation or by the stock of minority shareholders in their to prevent parent corporations and other controlling shareholders from misappropriating income or assets through with their subsidiaries or controlled corporations. The United States well on this is a of and rules. to the of minority shareholders in the United States is the judicial of and other controlling shareholder by the in the United States the rule challenges by shareholders to by corporate and as to what the rule there is that the for to to in other have the under the rule with The to of the rule the involves a of interest for some or all board or for parties controlling board In this shareholders or a to the in the United States the in the this of the to a that the corporation as a as would have from a a that the of judicial over board should upon the that one the to for the not with the various or other affiliated of interest triggering the the rule a of all or controlling shareholder a between the interest of the parent or controlling shareholder and the interest of the minority shareholders. The in the United States such a is of the stock in A minority shareholder in that that to and to a subsidiary to a minimum of from The as a of interest and the The that to the a of no with to The that there is a of interest depends on the parent corporation the and the minority this not have the of to what the in the as a of interest the The of there is to set the for the of the of the would to the to the of a in to what the in the of the what the The in the the to the two The not entail to the of minority shareholders. all of the shareholders the same Hence, all of the shareholders the same in to have the or earnings in the corporation with of in the different shareholders have for the minority shareholder in that such potentially as a of would a parent corporation would have a for other the parent would have for other and the parent would have for some other shareholders and other shareholders. Hence, the is the parent or controlling interest for the not the same as the other to the to liability on the of of its subsidiary the other shareholders not not the of the minimum of by the to the potentially to minority shareholders. this the not in this a for and its minority shareholders. that not the of for by the The for this a of interest to the would should have the all of the shareholders or in the same on this the other shareholders the to should have the by parent corporations or other controlling shareholders do not trigger the or the the parent or controlling shareholder has no all to the corporation or its minority shareholders with to the other the parent or controlling shareholder is to with a is a a is voting as a and voting as a voting as a one with a to own voting as a one all the shareholders and the for the shareholder is or a as relevant to corporate groups, the do not exercise the as or of the parent or controlling In other in the United States for the of controlling shareholders or parent corporations a and the to their with controlled corporations or the involves a by the controlled or not a the controlling shareholder or parent as a on a by a or controlled board of in the for in with a parent corporation or other controlling shareholder a of interest for the to trigger the is the for the a of in which in the United States a for the with a parent or other controlling one the of or of or other subsidiaries of for have a of interest of their financial interest their from as well as to for interest in any with The in a different which to common in the United States and has The as a that the of board not these upon this the in that the parent a in its with the In other a parent corporation or other controlling shareholder the of to the corporation and to all the shareholders the parent or controlling shareholder what the board not are controlled by the the corporation is to for the corporation and all of its and board such to under the approach, a as to the parent corporation or other shareholder or the board of in the United States that ownership of a of the voting stock or control over the in some the in the United States as with a in which the shareholder with the corporation owns a not an of the voting stock are These and upon their specific in the United States have in some to that with shareholders voting these shareholders the on the in other have control with of the voting to this of control is the of some in the United States to in a of a the of with parent corporations and the does not of the and control the is of the of the The an example of this of evaluation of the of with controlling shareholders. is a corporation with stock on the A a stock a of the in In to its to the and in one a for on corporate the rule in the United States (the the to a corporation and its minority corporate law In other is the law of the subsidiary or controlled of not the which for of to the subsidiary and the shareholders under corporate law in the United States. the of the of of to the is of the of the and of the of the not as the shareholder the of controlled and the to the to that the of on the is from to the a of the board of the to a of by financial the to the of the that the of not in the with the in the fact that a of by one of the shareholders in shareholder to its of stock and in the necessary under law in to do The to as to the of and the as a of the of to liability for this the the in the a to in the in the their and as what the as a from with a controlling of an with by an of all and a to the as the and for to the by that in to the for based upon the of the not in the of not as for the subsidiary or any ties to the by in for the and judicial in the United that by a of the shareholders of a in which have a of interest to the rule to a referred to as in some corporation such as and have that this impact an by shareholders do not have a interest in the a by the shareholders in the of what is the impact shareholders lack the to a between the corporation and its parent or controlling shareholder the or controlling of the shareholders in of the of the minority in the United States have that a of the minority is not for a with a parent corporation or controlling shareholder to some have a of for the impact of such a by that the to the to that the is the to the to the in this the to the to the is to the to the is the of the of in The for not to a of the minority is that minority shareholders for a with a parent corporation or controlling shareholder not well of the minority shareholders the In a the its to of the minority In the that the of and of the by a of by a of the minority shareholders the of for a from to the by a of the minority shareholders to have a impact on the of or the of the or the parent or controlling shareholder and the minority shareholders all the from the that the one of is with an of In to the minority shareholders under that the not does not of their the in minority shareholders that the shareholder through the no to the the minority shareholders not to in of the have as some upon the shareholders to for a based upon concerns other its of this definition is to the of what the of the and what an the this that the minority shareholders not voting for an to the of by the fact that stock rules their stock the by the of the controlling group voting and minority shareholders have for the which to to The of the to or other controlling shareholder in its impact on in on the this impact to parent companies or other controlling shareholders corporate with some from as of all to the such as the of the and the of in to an and a of the of an the that is for there to some in the for the parent or controlling as there is for in any in the law in the United States some other for to group in are In any some in the United States and as a a in which on the of the and of a in from the other in to the and in to the to the of the and from the of the The in the same in the same the and the in the the rule to of a the the with no of the or the amount of as not the for of Moreover, as the not to any corporate from which for the to the not to under the the in interest not to to the the minimum of with that not have the minimum In this the that to that not have or have the In other under the which in a of that the is the this under the is the of in through in a The that stock with a over in for value the to the of the the to the not by some value in by their financial by that the The not such to the a of and by which have the presented by a of their the by that the an to the financial to that the to the between the of the stock and by the which the not for the of rules for minority shareholders with to shareholders that would rules. in the United States are to by minority shareholders. with in which parents or other controlling shareholders from their subsidiaries or controlled in the United States from allowing any minority no the in the to a for the subsidiary or controlled in the United States various the of which is the that the in the should not to the corporation should the is referred to as the the to set in the either that the a upon the board to and that the should the to do or that would to the board to the should the to do the is the for a in that a of the have their of and should not the should is of the to the that should not the corporation should the parent or shareholder the and is of in an with the subsidiary or controlled corporation is to allowing a shareholder to to the is a minority shareholder to an the rule in the United States the to the in a of the is in the the a in of the all the to by of such in the the same judicial for on this parent corporations and controlling shareholders minority shareholders to corporate law in the United States protecting minority shareholders in this companies and other controlling shareholders have means for minority shareholders to their the common of which in the United States is a either with the parent or with corporation by the parent or controlling in corporation statutes in the United which that the shareholders of one of the create the for shareholders lack the to the are with two In a the parent or controlling shareholder of the to the and of the minority shareholders. A by the subsidiary or controlled to the minority shareholders. Hence, a with a parent or other shareholder with a or otherwise voting power to exercise control over the board the in the United States. the this rule to to the rule a of to the and a and by a of the minority the in corporate law in United States and In this of the from a which with a a between and which minority shareholders with this a minority shareholder to the The that not with minority shareholders in The to either to or to minority a by which that the minority shareholders a to would a for that to is not to the on this The not create a for shareholders to the would for the to the minority shareholders. The in that the from two of well as of and from the of from the in the lack of any by as of a to for a and the board to a on the The the to In the the to any in the financial based upon a from the in the United States in the value of from for is the of a for the the a for in to the by that the own would by the minority to and of the in in a number of other the in have on the the a between the to and the to other or controlling shareholder which the to some for the subsidiary or controlled corporation that the the parent or controlling shareholder to as to a for a of that the parent or controlling shareholder to the lack any by the parent or controlling shareholder of some corporate for the minority would to that the for the is for the parent or controlling shareholder to by the minority A second for minority shareholders in a from provisions in corporation statutes in the United States allowing shareholders from a to that the corporation a set by a judicially These provisions as a in the corporation statutes provisions shareholder for with provisions allowing a and a of shareholders to a In of a the shareholders the to one with from the of a in the which the of its in some that the In any an of the issues in stock the with the is in some other issues in as well as the impact of the minority or and on the of other provisions commonly such as of the to the with which prevent a shareholder from to the shareholders the to cover their and the potentially group of shareholders shareholders the as a of through an on of a of all minority with the prospect of and other by an based upon the to the value of the the or that any in the value of the corporation that the minority shareholders would have as shareholders the not These of over the of provide an for the shareholders. The the on the of the statutes and the of the with no relevant in corporation have an of a of judicial in the that any in an a should from an the that an not in of of corporate or and the and of this is that are the for from a under the specific of a the should not of minority shareholders to parent companies and controlling shareholders a to the stock by minority shareholders are to in a which a controlling interest in a for the of by the In a shareholder the bank as well as that the bank its as a controlling shareholder by an and and that the their in not the The the and the The that would not the of the in a by a controlling there is a or the not or by the controlling shareholder in the the in terms what the are and for the by the of the in not the same in a by parents or controlling shareholders. The is a the minority shareholders do not the in a no and their the from the fact a by a parent or controlling shareholder does not by the subsidiary or controlled and no These and the two by the in and with the minority shareholders protecting by with liability to the of the board to shareholders by a parent or controlling shareholder the as to the their and the controlling shareholder or in that in the as to what is in a by a parent or controlling In In a to the in a by a controlling shareholder to are These are that the is on by a of the minority the controlling shareholder to a the same stock to a and the controlling shareholder no the minority shareholders do not its The for The the shareholders otherwise have of a in a which are the do not the the of the minority such liability is to of each of which corporate groups potentially the same of corporate assets that minority shareholders of subsidiaries and controlled corporations to of such corporations. the of companies with and and the to the with which are corporate groups create for isolating in these in the United States from of the of the corporate as well as a of A in the United States for by the limited liability to shareholders is the power that have for to the of the corporation and liability upon the company’s controlling commonly referred to as the corporate a in the United States this is of the of to in as which do not mean and to or with of the of each on the by on what is relevant in of is to of what in the United in are in the United States a or for the corporate the second in each of which to or the from such there are or for in the United States to the corporate and liability on a shareholder for a debts. The is other or that with a corporation that to the is a shareholders liable the of the corporate A of in the United States that is a common for the is an example of on of a corporation that the corporation to the is groups create for through that the as to which is the companies in the group have common and and that the with a the is with a for for a from a parent the from a of corporate assets by controlling shareholders is a second for to as an by of the between and from of for in of corporation and for of through in the under which a of the one would in in the United States to for and of on a In these other to the of the the shareholder liable for the the amount by the and controlling shareholders from from the by corporate these with corporate groups create for that with a is common for controlling shareholders not to from a corporation for their own to between various controlled either to of the group to the amount upon the of in the In instances, the of value between parent and subsidiary or commonly which in the United States to is in the with one of the controlling corporations to and some that of the corporations the the and the corporation the to for the which not is a for in the United States. A from to a from to the the have the in which the corporation the minimum liability by to its in the United States their by that is a not on its one to what is The has to an amount of to the percentage of in the United States with and in which is a to is what The of with by the shareholders in for their with the that is and hazards for shareholders not to some of their own in the shareholder in stock which some earnings and shareholder a focus of in the United The is that the of for shareholder have this with the of from liability fact by some with for a of as a lack of assets the the corporation the relevant to the lack of to the and the for which to the of limited there is a of particular to corporate groups. is the that should corporate in corporate groups the attempt to what in is one is referred to as the The the in the United States is the of the of (the in in A by a corporation The assets of a of its to in and a liability in the minimum amount to a in The shareholder of this what one as a each of which one or two and all of which of a common the one assets to cover to the corporate and and the other companies by to the in what a to create a for the other corporations not to the The of a to that the in this for to other corporations liable that this not a the other companies not to the this in is to a in the United States liability in a in which there not of of or Moreover, the a in a should there is an of one for is to other the of the the of the and the of corporate with the of the has common to that are to in of a a based upon the that the a not to limited In an by of with in the United States that in a percentage of by is that which common for in the United is relevant to is not relevant for which should is a common for in the United relevant to corporate groups, some have that should to in to a as to an individual, is the controlling shareholder The is that no the of liability the shareholder is the that in the United States in a percentage of as to controlling Moreover, in in the United States to and of the or corporations controlling shareholders. from of corporate in of in the United States. In the that corporate are a in the of an of that the to in a of the in which the The is that to corporate in in the United States that have no to of corporate such as of shareholders to and of and to other for to corporate and shareholder and In to the to or the like, in the United States under one of the for that the have or stock not of of and in to the that the corporation the no or of its under of the that there is such of interest and ownership the corporation and the that the of the corporation and the no this of corporation in the has a of its are controlled by In a there a number of in in a corporation with a or that what the corporation is to control by one to not corporations would to provide limited such control with or the like, what does control does to to a corporation as a from its controlling one means and in which are to of corporate this a the to liable the to In other the or the and to the control or of interest the the should liable the control over the corporation to corporate or and not liable shareholders not this or should should a with shareholders are with corporate groups. an owns all or a of a voting is to this the corporation is would to a and the Hence, to in or to this should a not a parent corporation through its or other of the parent corporation are or of the is the parent control and for any or to by such the parent voting control the in all the and the and the is for the parent to to based upon or to based upon the that the or other the are for the A these in a of corporate groups is an attempt to an corporation liable for corporation in which the of the In an in a United States federal of the or based upon the of to that of the of subsidiary in the United States. the subsidiary and in the United States to in of the which not to in the United States through which not its with that from no assets in the United States and the to the to their in assets in the United which to the attempt to to the United States of the federal of or to the to that the control over The of the provide limited the by the as or the does not that the some have of The of to this the that control over not the of In this the that do not the of and that the two corporations and In this the amount of control over the amount of control that the in an to its is to to the for its with in this with the rules governing in federal to either or to the necessary control on its The or law is in the United States over the rule which law should have to an or the law of the in which the by the The in the parties to and to control or a with the and of control or in the in this Report. a to that parent corporations in abuse of limited liability and by a of between parent and is in the upon which a in which would have that there no or not assets to the of creditors, with or with to cover
Niels Peterson’s Proportionality and Judicial Activism is a very timely and accomplished book. It is an important addition to the now quite considerable literature on proportionality, and it would benefit anyone interested in this omnipresent doctrine, especially in the three jurisdictions it covers—Germany, Canada, and South Africa. The book is not too long, and extremely readable—two non-negligible advantages for any reader—and Peterson has a rare capacity of simplifying intricate analytical moves and theoretical constructs without losing accuracy, a talent he also applies to the many cases he reviews in the book. The book is also innovative and ambitious, making it a very interesting and enriching read. However, its innovation sometimes comes at the expense of accuracy and consistency, and the book could have benefited from framing its goals a bit more modestly. At the center of the book is the following bold thesis: proportionality and balancing, while giving judges considerable discretion, do not, as a matter of empirical fact, bring them to usurp that discretion and engage in judicial activism and self-empowerment. The reason, according to the book, is that judges fear losing public legitimacy—the main source of their power—and therefore limit the use of proportionality, by and large, to the realm in which judicial review is legitimate. This realm, according to the book, is defined based on John Hart Ely’s process theory, and is thus the correction of political democratic market failures. The book reviews what it takes to be all the relevant proportionality cases in three key jurisdictions—Germany, Canada, and South Africa—and classifies them according to criteria developed by the author, showing that most proportionality cases fall into the non-activist rather than the activist camp. In this review I will give a brief account of the main arguments in the book, commenting on them as I go along, and then make the following main claim: the book does not fully achieve what it claims to do—prove empirically that proportionality and balancing are not related to judicial activism. The way the research is framed, I would argue, does not fit the purpose for which it is devised and has some internal tensions and key methodological problems. However, many of the contributions of the book are to be found in the details and on the way to the conclusions, rather than in the conclusions themselves. In particular, to my mind, its greatest achievement is in its classification method, which shows that when judges use the heading of proportionality they do myriad different things, many of which do not include engaging directly with the content or importance of rights, and, I would argue, resemble the functions of an administrative court. Elsewhere I called this phenomenon, the administrization of constitutional law.1 Whether these judicial interventions amount to judicial activism or not, and under what theory of judicial review they can be justified, is not resolved by the book. But, the in-depth analysis of the cases in the book and its novel classification system show that proportionality is more complex than its four simple subtests suggest, and this must inform any debate about proportionality and activism. In the first chapter Petersen develops a sophisticated and well-argued-for theory of judicial activism. According to Petersen, “[t]he question of whether courts acted in an activist manner depends on whether they were in line with the role that they are supposed to play in a liberal democratic political system” (at 15). It would depend, therefore, on our theory of judicial review. Petersen chooses a theory based on John Hart Ely’s process theory, according to which courts should not intervene in the substance of the democratic game—value choices should be left to democratic majorities—but rather correct market failures in the democratic process, and, like a referee, make sure that the players adhere to the rules of the democratic game and not rig it in unfair ways. Courts should therefore protect “discrete and insular minorities” against majoritarian bias, and rights related to the democratic process such as free speech and voting rights.2 Petersen extends Ely’s theory especially by including also the protection against legislative capture by interest groups and lobbyists (at 26–27). The chapter is masterfully written, and the exposition of market-failure-based accounts is excellent. Relating activism to one’s theory of judicial review is a novel and unconventional approach, and it strikes at a soft spot of definitions of activism that view it as an unwarranted departure from the law.3 Such definitions must rely on a theory of judicial review to define what the law is but do not always acknowledge that. However, since Petersen’s definition of activism is strictly normative, it departs from the common use of the term, which also has a contextual and descriptive element—activism is usually assessed in relation to a certain norm for judicial intervention prevalent in the relevant society, and thus cannot be defined solely in normative and non-contextual terms.4 Choosing Ely’s process theory is also novel and unconventional, coming from a German scholar, as German constitutional jurisprudence is emphatically substantive, and talks freely about judges as safeguarding an “objective value order,”5 while rejecting as overly American perceptions of judges as mere referees.6 It is especially a novel choice to support proportionality and balancing, as these are justified precisely for the type of jurisprudence which engages with values, and therefore must resort to balancing when such values conflict.7 If successful this choice could show that proportionality is justified even within a theory that emphasizes judicial restraint, which would be a counterintuitive, and therefore important, finding. However, squaring actual proportionality jurisprudence with Ely is a tough job, and as I will argue, the actual review of the cases by Petersen does not quite do that, and uses another definition of non-activism instead. In the second chapter Petersen delves with impressive skill into the analytically complex and abstract debate on balancing, incommensurability, and indeterminacy—the accusation that balancing compares things with no common denominator (e.g., the right to free speech and the interest in public security) so that it lacks rational content, and is therefore indeterminate and does not constrain judicial discretion. This chapter too is masterfully written, and Petersen convincingly shows the flaws in several key attempts to claim that balancing can escape this critique. However, the conclusions drawn from this realization are less convincing to my mind and do not appreciate the full force of the critique. Petersen is comforted by the fact that other methods, such as categorical rules, also suffer from indeterminacy, and thinks the choice of proportionality can be justified as a policy choice that prefers standards over rules (trading certainty for more flexibility to adjust to the particularities of the case) and more rather than less judicial control over the legislature (at 58). However, rules (unless one adopts full rule-skepticism) are only partially indeterminate—in the “hard” cases, or in the “penumbra”8 —while balancing, if it amounts to comparing the uncomparable, seems completely indeterminate; it is not clear what content it has at all, and what direction, however little, it can give to judges, if it suffers from the problem of incommensurability. Second, if balancing gives little or no guidance to judges, the problem is not just a policy problem of trading certainty with accuracy; in constitutional law, it is a political problem of accountability and representation. Finally, the idea that less guidance to judges means more control of the legislature is based on the assumption that judges, given discretion, would use it primarily to control the legislature rather than capitulate to it. If this is not correct, rules might actually control the legislature more than balancing.9 Having defined activism, and concluded that proportionality allows for judicial discretion, Petersen proceeds, in the last four chapters (chs. 3–6), to the heart of the book—the empirical analysis which aims to show that despite its open-endedness, proportionality does not lead to activism. I will briefly survey here the design and finding of the research and elaborate more in the next part. The survey consists of reviewing 250 German cases, 67 Canadian cases, and 44 South African cases, each analyzed according to roughly 10 criteria, depending on the jurisdiction (tables at 84–86). These include the four subtests of proportionality: illegitimate purpose, rationality (means fit ends) and necessity (no less restrictive means) joined together, and balancing (benefits outweigh costs); in addition, there are several other criteria, some of which are the author’s own, that will be discussed later. Each case is categorized under one or more of these headings, depending on criteria set by the author. The pool of cases reviewed consists of only (and all) cases in which the court struck down legislation, and the review period begins, for each jurisdiction, roughly since proportionality review was introduced to the system. The author then analyzes the results looking especially at the use of the fourth test of proportionality—balancing—which is the only test to directly and explicitly engage in comparing and making trade-offs between rights and interests, and is thus taken to be the main indicator for judicial activism. The first finding is that the use of balancing in both Canada and South Africa is consistently modest and stands below 10 percent of all proportionality cases reviewed (except for an increase in Canada toward the end of the survey); in Germany, balancing’s use was modest in the early years but rose dramatically in the 1970s and has plateaued since at around 30 percent (graph at 82). These findings are interpreted to support two theses by the author: (i) that the use of proportionality does not bring about judicial activism (since most proportionality cases do not include balancing); (ii) that the reason for that is that courts are subject to institutional constraints—they will lose public legitimacy if they are too activist. This explains why there is little balancing in Canada and South Africa, where the Court has not earned full legitimacy yet, and why as the German Court earned more legitimacy (and maybe the Canadian Court also in recent years), it increased its use of balancing. The last chapter analyzes only balancing cases, and shows that even these cases, most of the time, are not “real” balancing cases, in the sense of directly balancing rights and public interests, and only few cases can be so identified. Does the research as just described achieve its purported goal: to show empirically that “all three examined courts refrain from using proportionality for purposes of judicial activism” (back cover)? I believe it does not. The reason is a mix of methodological problems and inconsistencies in the design and execution of the research. As far as I can tell, the only quantifiable empirical proof to show that in all three jurisdictions the use of proportionality is not activist is the low level of balancing cases in those jurisdictions summarized in the graph at 81. There are, however, several problems regarding this deduction. The first relates to what it is exactly that the author means by a balancing case. In Canada it means that the Court formally relied on the fourth, balancing, subtest of proportionality in its reasoning. However, in Canada, as Petersen acknowledges, there is a doctrinal aversion to the use of that test, so that not using balancing formally does not mean that substantively the reasoning is not based on balancing.10 What we can learn from this data pertains therefore only to the perception of activism—does the Court wish to appear activist or not (assuming that balancing sends an activist signal). It cannot tell us whether the decisions themselves are activist, since balancing can lurk below the surface. In South Africa and Germany, however, courts do not always distinguish between the four subtests of proportionality (in South Africa not at all) and when they do not, a balancing case would mean what Petersen, rather than the Court, takes to be a balancing case. Petersen identifies balancing cases based on two criteria he devises—that the reasoning includes a comparison of values, and that there are no alternative modes of reasoning that are factual or empirical, and thus indicate the use of the rationality and necessity subtests (at 73). I think these are reasonable criteria, but I would like to note two problems: first, this means that counting for a balancing case would mean different things in different cases (for some cases formal, for some substantive); second, when we move away from formal reasoning, which can be relatively objectively measured, we get into the realm of subjective assessment of the surveyor—what if, for example, there is comparison of values, but also some, but not much, reliance on factual factors and policy efficacy?—and thus the findings do not have the strength of more objectively verified data. Another problem is revealed once we look at the finding on Germany which cannot indicate a similarly low percentage of balancing cases, as in Canada and South Africa. Over the entire period surveyed, 24 percent of the cases are labeled balancing cases, and in some decades as much as 37 percent. The problem now becomes knowing what percentage counts as proof of activism or lack thereof. If Canada and South Africa are labeled not activist based on less than 10 percent balancing, does that mean that Germany should be labeled activist, or is a maximum of 37 percent still low and therefore it is not? We cannot tell since there is no criteria set for answering this question in the book. One could assume at least that this data would indicate that Germany is more activist than Canada and South Africa, but this conclusion too is not reached in the book. Instead, when we move to Germany the proof of lack of activism becomes not the actual percentage of balancing cases but the fact that this percentage was low in the early years of the Court and rose in the 1970s. This, the book argues, indicates that the use of balancing is dependent on, and thus regulated by, the threat of losing public legitimacy. As the German Court acquired more public legitimacy in the 1970s it could afford to use balancing more. In South Africa and Canada this has not happened yet, or at least not to the same extent, so balancing has remained low. But if this is now the claim, then the book has not established that proportionality would not bring about activism, only that it would not bring about activism as long as the Court does not acquire sufficient public legitimacy. And, in addition, Petersen has not shown but has only speculated that the fear of loss of legitimacy is at play—other explanations are readily available to explain the differences between the use of balancing in these countries, such as the formalist common law tradition in South Africa versus the more substantive and communitarian tradition of German jurisprudence.11 There are several other methodological as well as substantive problems that I will indicate only briefly. First, the case selection is based only on cases in which the Court overturned legislation; however, some of the seminal proportionality cases, such as Kiegsra12 in Canada, and some of the most activist proportionality cases, such as Mizrahi13 in Israel, are upholding cases. Secondly, the pool of reviewed cases in Canada and South Africa is very small, spanning between 10 and 27 cases per decade. For such a small pool, any slight change in categorization can dramatically affect the results, and Petersen does not provide us with statistical assurances that his sample is big enough for empirical conclusions. Thirdly, and substantively, the book jumps very quickly to the conclusion that balancing is the right, and only, indication of activism in the use of proportionality. This does not follow from the book’s own definition of activism as going beyond correcting Ely-type market failures, as the other tests of proportionality may also amount to non-market failure interventions, and as balancing can be used to correct market failure. The research therefore suffers from several key problems if it aims to provide hard empirical proof. However, maybe we should view it differently, as a heuristic on a large scale, or as straddling the space between qualitative/small N, and quantitative/big N research. As such, its assessment changes dramatic- ally, and I think it shows clever and sophisticated analysis and can provide us with very important and valuable findings, especially pertaining to what I have called the “administrization” of constitutional law.14 The book’s most interesting and important achievement, to my mind, is its scheme of categorization for proportionality cases. What is unique about it, is that it is not limited to the four subtests, usually associated with proportionality but adds several additional key doctrinal tests, used by courts in such cases. I would like to highlight the following tests: consistency and coherency—looking for inconsistencies within legislation or between different acts of legislation; protecting legitimate expectations—such as when a new law changes the regulatory regime without providing for a transition period for those that relied on the previous regime; procedural arguments—lack of administrative review mechanism, or mechanisms for hearing, in the implementation of the law, or even procedural flaws in the process of legislation itself; lack of determinacy of the legislative norm; and overbreadth (note that in describing these tests I have not mentioned the word “rights” even once). Petersen then goes on and reviews many key cases in all three jurisdictions to explain his categorization of them under these different headings, and does so, on the whole, convincingly and informatively. He also provides a helpful list of all the cases reviewed in the Appendix. Analyzing the cases under these headings, and also under the formal subtests of proportionality, shows that the Court is often engaged in what Petersen the review of the of legislation, and what I would the tests of administrative law to I have that in jurisdictions courts are not engaged primarily with the and of the rights in the do they even a constitutional for legitimacy they administrative law, and of law, to legislation, the same way an administrative court would do to decisions and This also from the of by such which are taken from administrative the to the legislature to correct procedural directly certain changes in legislation, judicial review following legislation over in a and so Petersen provides in his book a and sophisticated account of this phenomenon, and he is correct in our to it as he in his that courts look for flaws in legislation is however, than showing that they have not engaged in judicial activism, especially if we define activism according to Ely’s theory of judicial review. The way I Ely’s theory, it would to be and as long as they are not by for example, the reviewed in the book (at in which the German Court struck down a law that limited the of new in where there is an The Court based its on rejecting the empirical for the legislation according to which there was no for in the relevant Such a case would not fit Ely’s of judicial review. It is not a case of and insular of political that it is a case of of is in this as there was no for that, and, in any Ely this of his theory and it from a not to the rationality of a law that between and Ely usually cannot (and should not when they do the to which of the legislature are under the of but they can tell when a legislature is Petersen’s book therefore on a more of the judicial role than market and cannot rely on this to show that proportionality is not activist. is not a market failure. It and there is no in it that the free democratic However, our to rationality or what I called administrative review of legislation, the debate over activism and proportionality by describing what is at with to proportionality cases, and it does show that proportionality is not just about balancing. This about a last courts not the and four subtests of proportionality and the jurisprudence of law review they engage would be to use Petersen’s book as an for just that.
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)
According to HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), the medical insurance claim process is carried out by healthcare providers, insurance companies, and clearinghouses. The clearinghouse coordinates the medical insurance claims between providers and insurance companies. As centralized communication hubs, clearinghouses may maliciously or unintentionally leak patient information. In this work, we propose a distributed solution to replace the role of clearinghouses during health insurance claim process and mitigate the risk of data leakage among parties in Healthcare sector. Our solution enhances the patients' privacy protection through developing a HIPAA compliance system for the medical insurance claim process in a decentralized manner using blockchain technology. Blockchain ensures transaction integrity and anonymity of cryptocurrencies by using distributed immutable ledgers. We first design data structures for patient information, medical service record, insurance payment, and insurance agreements within the ledger. We then focus on defining smart contracts for privacy assurance, as well as automating the insurance claim process. We implement and evaluate the proposed framework with Hyperledger Fabric, showing promising performance and response time.
Yiming Jiang, Chenxu Wang, Ye Huang, Siyu Long · 5 authors
At present, the Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly setting off a huge wave of digitalization in traditional industries. In the era of the Internet of Everything, massive data is generated by IoT devices. Recently, Blockchain has attracted more and more attentions in the field of IoT due to its decentralization, traceability, security and so on. Many IoT-oriented data services are built based on distributed ledger technology like blockchains. However, due to the lack of scalability and high transaction costs of the public blockchain, it is hard to directly apply the blockchain technology to IoT scenarios. The recent transaction directed acyclic graph (TDAG) technology, especially Tangle, is suitable for low-latency M2M (Machine to Machine) micropayment transactions in the ever-growing scale of the edge-centric IoT. In this paper, we propose a framework to integrate Tangle into IoT blockchains and build a cross-chain interactive decentralized access model in the context of data management. We employ a consortium blockchain as the control station, and Tangle runs as the backbone of all IoT devices. It is equivalent to opening the off-chain channel of the DAG Tangle structure on the consortium blockchain. Transactions in these channels form the sub-Tangle and then merge sub-Tangle into the main Tangle for confirmation through the notary mechanism. Finally, we implement a prototype of the proposed model and conduct extensive experiments to evaluate its performance. The results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our framework.
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 has brought a huge paradigm shift in multiple industries, by integrating distributed ledger, smart contracts and consensus protocol under the same roof. Notable applications of blockchain include cryptocurrencies and large-scale multi-party transaction management systems. The latter fits very well into the domain of manufacturing and supply chain management for Integrated Circuits (IC), which, despite several advanced technologies, is vulnerable to malicious practices, such as overproduction, IP piracy and deleterious design modification to gain unfair advantages. To combat these threats, researchers have proposed several ideas like hardware metering, design obfuscation, split manufacturing and watermarking. In this paper, we show, how these issues can be complementarily dealt with using blockchain technology coupled with identity-based encryption and physical unclonable functions, for improved resilience against certain adversarial motives. As part of our proposed blockchain protocol, titled `BLIC', we propose an authentication mechanism to secure both active and passive IC transactions, and a composite consensus protocol designed for IC supply chains. We also present studies on the security, scalability, privacy and anonymity of the BLIC protocol.
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
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 Internet of Things aims at connecting everything ranging from individuals, organizations, companies to things in the physical and virtual world. The digital identity has always been considered as the keystone for all online services and the foundation for building security mechanisms such as authentication and authorization. However, current literature still lacks of a comprehensive research on the digital identity management for the Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper, we identify digital identity challenges and solutions for the Internet in general. We then focus on how existing solutions cope with IoT requirements such as scalability, interoperability, mobility, security and privacy. We also investigate recent surging blockchain sovereign identity solutions and enumerate some projects and startups which are focusing on IoT identity problems. Furthermore, we elaborate challenges of building identity management systems for the IoT, including access control, privacy preserving, trust and performance respectively. At last, we conclude with the promising future research trends in building IoT identity management systems.
This paper provides a vision and proposes mechanisms to transform the blockchain duplicated computing into distributed parallel computing architecture by transforming smart contract which features data driven from the ground up to support moving computing to native data strategy. This new distributed parallel computing architecture can be employed to build a large size of data set from various distributed hosted medical data sets which might consist of personal electronic medical record (EMR) and various medical data. This large medical data set will enable researchers to jump start the deep learning research for medical domain. Distributed data management, distributed data sharing, and distributed learning are the core mechanisms in the new architecture. The required new researches and developments to employ Google federated learning and transfer learning algorithms in this new architecture are discussed. The approach and mechanism enabled by the new architecture is illustrated to build a real world evidence of clinical trial toward personal and precision medicine. Research issues and technical challenges are provided.
Although cryptocurrencies have witnessed explosive growth in the past year, they have also raised many concerns, among which a crucial one is the scalability issue of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. Suffering from the large overhead of global consensus and security assurance, even leading cryptocurrencies can only handle up to tens of transactions per second, which largely limits their applications in real- world scenarios. Among many proposals to improve cryptocurrency scalability, one of the most promising and mature solutions is the payment channel network (PCN), which offers off-chain settlement of transactions with minimal involvement of expensive blockchain operations. In this paper, we investigate the problem of payment routing in PCN. We suggest crucial design goals in PCN routing, and propose a novel distributed dynamic routing mechanism called CoinExpress. Through extensive simulations, we have shown that our proposed mechanism is able to achieve outstanding payment acceptance ratio with low routing overhead.
Thomas Kobzan, Alexander Biendarra, Sebastian Schriegel, Thomáš Herbst · 6 authors
The fourth Industrial Revolution is finding its way into modern manufacturing sites. Assets with a certain degree of implemented communication technology will be enabled to interconnect and cooperate with practically every other entity via the Industrial Internet. An extreme amount of data and information will be exchanged all the time. Machines will be empowered to make crucial decisions autonomously influencing whole production processes. Erroneous, illegitimate or tampered data will lead to incorrect decisions and will be posing a huge threat to future strong cross-linked added value networks. An approach to tackle this issue comes from a technology called distributed ledger technology with its most known variant the “blockchain”. Certain properties of blockchain technology are showing promising enhancements for industrial networks primarily in order to guarantee digital trust. In this paper, issues like the ability to scale and the adaption onto the requirements of industrial networks are investigated. It turns out that simulation approaches must be taken into consideration, and a first step for an implementation is presented.
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)
Imposter devices pose serious threats. The majority of low-cost edge devices can easily be counterfeited or cloned; the supply chain is insufficiently secure. Reliability of deployed devices can be called into question simply because they might be counterfeit or cloned. It is a must to identify edge devices' sourcing uniquely and verify their validity periodically at runtime. We integrate blockchain technology to authenticate resource-constrained, low-cost edge devices. We use SRAM-based physically unclonable functions (PUFs)to generate unique “digital fingerprints” (device IDs). Registered manufacturers upload a cryptographic hash of each device ID to a “globally accessible” blockchain instance (key-value store or smart contract). While registering/designating a device locally, the end-user verifies whether the hash is present in that blockchain. We utilize a “locally permissioned” blockchain infrastructure (which is still a globally managed blockchain or, in future, a sidechain)to authenticate edge devices for a defense-in-depth approach. Devices can authenticated periodically to prevent device cloning. Target environments can be large and have varied trust among users and lack a specific perimeter; this “local” blockchain methodology is thus pertinent, especially since blockchains gain security over time. Our approach reduces the potential for classes of information leakage and types of sabotage in a critical infrastructure or large-scale deployment (such as a smart city)arising from imposter devices. This methodology protects against such imposters in mobile settings within an IoT infrastructure too.
Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security
Adelyne Maria Mendes Pereira, Luciana Dias de Lima, Cristiani Vieira Machado
This article discusses the processes of de centralization and regionalization of health policy in Brazil and Spain between 1980 and 2015. The study was developed with contributions of the historical institutionalism and of the historical com parative method, by means of three dimensions of analysis: State context; trajectory and institution ality of the decentralization and regionalization of health; and constraints. The study showed that,in both countries, the more general context of re-democratization and decentralization of the State conditioned the reforms of health systems and their political-administrative organization. In addition, historical, institutional and political factors have had a specific impact in each case, influencing the regional organization of services, the balance of power and the division of responsibilities between the governmental spheres in the management, financing and coordination of health policy. The study suggests that the way these factors interrelated over time is important for understanding the decentralization and regionalization of health systems in different contexts.