Nowadays, more and more people are engaged in media creation and sharing for income. A common way to earn income is to upload media to an intermediary platform and then let the platform distribute some profits. However, intermediary platforms generally not only extract most of the profits, but also lack transparency in their operation, where owners lose direct control over the media. Nevertheless, individual sharing is not feasible for owners because each owner holds too little media to attract enough users independently. Blockchain is a solution to the above problem by gathering media from multiple owners without intermediaries. Though a lot of works have studied the use of blockchain for decentralized management of media data, many of them either did not consider sharing needs or tracing the illegal redistribution by malicious users. As for other works, most of them adopted symmetric digital watermarking in their blockchain networks, and thus fail to protect the rights of users who may be framed by malicious owners. Although asymmetric watermarking has been used by two existing works, the owner-side embedding pattern results in low owner-side efficiency. In view of this, we design a media sharing blockchain network in which the asymmetric fingerprinting (i.e., watermarking) with user-side embedding is introduced. Besides superior owner-side efficiency, our scheme also outperforms the above two ones in terms of TTP-free. Moreover, our scheme is designed to offer a user-friendly experience and support record traceability. The performance of our scheme is verified by both theoretical and experimental evaluations.
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Zakaria Abou El Houda, Abdelhakim Hafid, Lyes Khoukhi
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks continue to grow at a rapid rate plaguing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and individuals in a stealthy way. Thus, intrusion detection systems (IDSs) must evolve to cope with these increasingly sophisticated and challenging security threats. Traditional IDSs are prone to zero-day attacks since they are usually signature-based detection systems. The recent advent of machine learning and deep learning (ML/DL) techniques can help strengthen these IDSs. However, the lack of up-to-date labeled training datasets makes these ML/DL based IDSs inefficient. The privacy nature of these datasets and widespread emergence of adversarial attacks make it difficult for major organizations to share their sensitive data. Federated Learning (FL) is gaining momentum from both academia and industry as a new sub-field of ML that aims to train a global statistical model across multiple distributed users, referred to as collaborators, without sharing their private data. Due to its privacy-preserving nature, FL has the potential to enable privacy-aware learning between a large number of collaborators. This paper presents a novel framework, called MiTFed, that allows multiple software defined networks (SDN) domains ($i.e.,$collaborators) to collaboratively build a global intrusion detection model without sharing their sensitive datasets. In particular, MiTFed consists of: (1) a novel distributed architecture that allows multiple SDN based domains to securely collaborate in order to cope with sophisticated security threats while preserving the privacy of each SDN domain; (2) a novel Secure Multiparty Computation (SMPC) scheme to securely aggregate local model updates; and (3) a blockchain based scheme that uses Ethereum smart contracts to maintain the collaboration in a fully decentralized, trustworthy, flexible, and efficient manner. To the best of our knowledge, MiTFed is the first framework that leverages FL, blockchain and SDN technologies to mitigate the new emerging security threats in large scale. To evaluate MiTFed, we conduct several experiments using real-world network attacks; the experimental results using the well-known public network security dataset NSL-KDD show that MiTFed achieves efficiency and high accuracy in detecting the new emerging security threats in both binary and multi-class classification while preserving the privacy of collaborators, making it a promising framework to cope with the new emerging security threats in SDN.
With the advancement of cyber threats, blockchain technology has evolved to have a significant role in providing secure and reliable decentralized applications. One of these applications is a remote voting system that allow voters to participate in elections remotely. This work proposes a privacy-preserving e-voting system supporting score voting using blockchain technology. The main challenge with score voting compared to the regular yes/no voting approach is that a voter is allowed to assign a score from a defined range for each candidate. To preserve privacy, votes shall be encrypted before submission to the Blockchain, however, a malicious voter can modify the score value before encrypting it to manipulate the elections result for the favor of a certain candidate. To address this challenge, the proposed scheme allows voters to first prove that the submitted score lies in the predefined range before the vote is added to the Blockchain to ensure fairness of the election. The performance of our scheme is evaluated against a set of comprehensive experiments designed to determine optimal bounds for workload and transaction send rates and measure the impact of exceeding these bounds on critical performance metrics. The results of these simulations and their implications therefore indicate that the proposed scheme is secure while being able to handle up to 10,000 transactions at a time.
Vlad Dıaconıța, Anda Belciu, Maria Georgiana Stoica
In this study, we explore the challenges and potential solutions to blockchain-based voting. As a first step, we present a comparison of the relevant platforms for implementing smart contracts in decentralized applications (dApps). We analyze the top platforms, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages, their architecture, and which are more reliable for developing smart contracts. The goal is to find a technology that offers various facilities to the developer and multiple functionalities and performance in the development of smart contracts in a field that has seen an incredible pace of innovation. Based on the findings from our research, we propose a framework based on blockchain technology and smart contracts for university-level voting based on blockchains.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Hung Du, Srikanth Thudumu, Sankhya Singh, Scott D. Barnett · 7 authors
The rapid growth of both the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) results in a high demand for AI applications in devices. To achieve high levels of accuracy, AI applications typically require a large amount of annotated data. Accessing such data is challenging in various applications such as healthcare, finance and information security. Federated learning (FL) is one of the strategies that was proposed to overcome this challenge. Specifically, FL enables the AI model in the centralized system to be trained without any prior knowledge of the information on the devices. Recent FLs have the disadvantage that they are dependent upon a centralized system, and thus are susceptible to single points of failure. This paper proposes a strategy that employs FL in a decentralized environment where devices can communicate with each other to increase the accuracy of the AI model in each device. Furthermore, we evaluate the proposed strategy in the image classification task with the ResNet50 architecture and the CIFAR-10 dataset. The evaluation shows that the ResNet50 model trained in the decentralized environment can achieve comparable results to the model trained in the centralized environment.
In the present situation, most people are not satisfied with the final result of the voting system. This is because the current system for voting is centralized and fully controlled by the election commission. So, there is a chance that the central body can be compromised or hacked and the final result can be tempered. In this direction, a decentralized, Blockchain and IoT based methodology for voting system is devised and presented in this paper. Blockchain is totally transparent, secured and immutable technique because it uses concept like encryption, decryption, hash function, consensus and Merkle tree etc. which make Blockchain Technology an appropriate platform for storing and sharing the data in a secured and anonymous manner. IoT makes use of biometric sensors using which people can cast their votes in not only physical mode but also in digital mode. As a response, a message is received to the owner for casting his vote to ensure the authentication. In this way, the present voting system is more secure and trust-worthy by using the properties of both Blockchain and IoT, and therefore, election process in the democratic countries is valued more. The proposed method ensures security as well as reduces the computational time as compared to the existing approaches.
Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Taotao Wang, Zibin Lin, Shengli Zhang, Long Shi · 6 authors
A decentralized identity system that can provide users with self-sovereign digital identities to facilitate complete control over their own data is paramount to Web 3.0. The account system on blockchain is an ideal archetype for realizing Web 3.0 decentralized identity. However, a disadvantage of such completely anonymous identity system is that users can create multiple accounts without authentication to obfuscate their activities on the blockchain. In particular, the current anonymous blockchain account system cannot accurately register the social relationships and interactions between real human users, given the amorphous mappings between users and blockchain identities. This work proposes zkBID, a zero-knowledge blockchain-account-based Web 3.0 decentralized identity scheme, to overcome endemic mistrust in blockchain account systems. zkBID links souls (blockchain accounts) to humans (users' personhood credentials) in a one-to-one manner to truly reflect the social relationships and interactions between humans on the blockchain. zkBID conceals the one-to-one relationships between blockchain accounts and users' personhood credentials for privacy protection using zero-knowledge proofs and linkable ring signatures. Thus, with zkBID, the users' blockchain accounts are credibly anonymous. Importantly, zkBID is fully decentralized: all user-related data are generated by users and verified by smart contracts on the blockchain. We implemented zkBID and built a blockchain test network for evaluation purposes. Our tests demonstrate the effectiveness of zkBID and suggest proper ways to configure zkBID system parameters.
Open access
3 source records
cs.CR
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Blockchain has built-in security features. Basic concepts in blockchain include cryptographic, decentralized, and consensus concepts that guarantee integrity. It's been extremely difficult for a very long time to create a safe and secure electronic voting system that gives the clarity and versatility provided by electronic systems, as well as the transparency and privacy supplied by present voting systems. In this research work, blockchain application is assessed for implementing decentralized electronic voting systems. The study offers a different electronic voting system based on blockchain that tackles some of the drawbacks and limitations of current systems and assesses some of the well-known blockchain frameworks in order to build a blockchain-based e-voting system. Through the analysis of a case study, the possibilities of distributed ledger technology have been specifically evaluated.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Mohammad Nabiluzzaman Neloy, Md. Abdul Wahab, Sheikh Wasif, Abdulla All Noman · 8 authors
Abstract Traditional voting procedures are non‐remote, time‐consuming, and less secure. While the voter believes their vote was submitted successfully, the authority does not provide evidence that the vote was counted and tallied. In most cases, the anonymity of a voter is also not sure, as the voter's details are included in the ballot papers. Many voters consider this voting system untrustworthy and manipulative, discouraging them from voting, and consequently, an election loses a significant number of participants. Although the inclusion of electronic voting systems (EVS) has increased efficiency; however, it has raised concerns over security, legitimacy, and transparency. To mitigate these problems, blockchain technology has been leveraged and smart contract facilities with a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) to propose a remote voting system that makes the overall voting procedure transparent, semi‐decentralized, and secure. In addition, a system that aids in boosting the number of turnouts in an election through an incentivization policy for the voters have also developed. Through the proposed virtual campaigning feature, the authority can generate a decent amount of revenue, which downsizes the overall cost of an election. To reduce the associated cost of transactions using smart contracts, this system implements a hybrid storage system where only a few cardinal data are stored in the blockchain network.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Emmanuel Baldwin Mbaya, Emmanuel Adetiba, Joke A. Badejo, John S. Wejin · 9 authors
Cloud computing is a technology for efficiently using computing infrastructures and a business model for selling computing resources and services. However, intruders find such complex and distributed infrastructures appealing targets for cyber-attacks. Cyber-attacks are severe threats that can jeopardize the quality of service provided to clients and compromise data integrity, confidentiality, and availability. Cyber-attacks are becoming more complex, making it more challenging to detect intrusions effectively. Due to the high traffic and increased malicious activities on the Internet, a single Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can be overwhelmed. Despite the various Deep Learning (DL) approaches that have been proposed as alternative solutions, there are still pertinent security issues to be addressed especially in federated cloud computing domains. This work proposes a Secure Federated Intrusion Detection Model Version 1 (SecFedIDM-V1) using blockchain technology and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). The Cobourg Intrusion Detection Dataset (CIDDS) was acquired, pre-processed and split into 60:20:20, 70:15:15, and 80:10:10 for training, testing, and validation respectively to develop the proposed intrusion traffic classification component of the proposed model. The developed SecFedIDM-V1 was later deployed as a Python-based web application that captures network packets for classifying attacks into normal or an attack type. The attack packets are recorded in a Hyperledger Fabric (a private blockchain technology) to serve as a signature database to be used by other nodes in the network. From the evaluation results of the intrusion classifier, the 80:10:10 BiLSTM network performed better than GRU with a Precision of 0.99624, Recall of 0.99906, F1 Score of 0.99614, False Positive Rate (FPR) of 0.00094, False Negative Rate (FNR) of 0.00395 and True Positive Rate (TPR) of 0.99605. The SecFedIDM-V1 can be deployed alongside Firewalls in a federated cloud computing environment to reinforce the security of the infrastructure.
V. Sathya Preiya, V. D. Ambeth Kumar, Ritesh Vijay, K. Vijay · 5 authors
Given the increasing importance of technology in meeting human needs, its utilization has become crucial. In contemporary democracies, where public trust in governments is declining and elections play a pivotal role, the widespread adoption of technology has led to new challenges. Elections hold significant importance as they determine the future leaders of countries or organizations. However, certain computerized voting systems have faced criticism for their lack of transparency. Establishing public trust in the government is a formidable task due to the lack of transparency and susceptibility to exploitation in existing voting procedures. Both traditional and current digital voting systems are ineffective due to their vulnerabilities. The main objective is to address issues in conventional and electronic voting systems, including errors and unfairness that may arise during the voting process. Integrating blockchain technology into the electoral process can ensure fair elections and reduce unfair practices. The computerized voting methods do not meet the necessary standards for widespread usage, and the physical voting systems also face numerous issues. This underscores the importance of finding a solution to protect the democratic principles of citizens. By offering a fast and secure voting method, this system has the potential to bring about a revolutionary change in the electoral process. It could lead to higher voter participation and more accurate election results. The proposed approach presents a framework for digital voting using blockchain technology, eliminating the need for physical polling locations. Our suggested design incorporates adaptable consensus algorithms to support a scalable blockchain. Smart contracts ensure secure interactions between users and the network during transaction execution. The security aspects of the blockchain-based voting mechanism have also been addressed, including the use of cryptographic hashes for transaction encryption and prevention of 51% attacks. Furthermore, blockchain technology has been utilized to establish transaction systems throughout the voting process. Performance studies of the proposed system demonstrate its feasibility for deployment in large populations.
Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Tanzeel Zaidi, Muhammad Usman, Muhammad Umar Aftab, Hanan Aljuaid · 5 authors
The Internet of Things (IoT) connects many objects and allows continuous communication and data sharing has emerged as a revolutionary technology. However, expanding IoT devices has raised concerns regarding data security and access control. Traditional access control mechanisms face challenges in managing access rights, particularly in scenarios where multiple users with the same roles try to access several resources which may lead to conflicting roles. Additionally, there is also an overhead of system performance using traditional approaches. In existing studies, the main problem of conflict roles is not addressed or not even identified appropriately. This paper proposes a framework to address these challenges using blockchain technology and role-based access control with a smart contract implementation on the hyperledger fabric framework. The proposed methodology introduces a role management system that resolves conflicts based on predefined rules and user preferences. It employs a consensus mechanism to determine access permissions, ensuring fairness and accountability. The findings demonstrate that applying the suggested framework eliminates conflicting problems, improves system security and also provides better results in response times of twelve seconds on average for thirty-five concurrent user requests. It also provides a secure and transparent access control framework which improves response time and provides security based on roles.
This research focuses on the application of Hyperledger Fabric, a blockchain technology, in e-voting systems to enhance transparency and security. The study aims to design, build, and test a secure and transparent e-voting system that promotes trust and accountability in the voting process. By leveraging the features of Hyperledger Fabric, such as smart contracts and distributed ledger technology, the proposed system ensures the integrity and immutability of voting data. This abstract provides an overview of the system's architecture, security considerations, implementation details, and the potential impact of adopting blockchain-based e-voting. By employing the principles of transparency and decentralization, the solution addresses the challenges inherent in traditional voting systems. The research contributes valuable insights into the effective utilization of Hyperledger Fabric for e-voting, offering a promising avenue to enhance transparency, security, and efficiency in the voting process.
E-voting reduced the cost of election and provided convenience to some extent as compared to the traditional approach of pen and paper but it was considered to be unreliable as anyone having access to the machine physically can obstruct the machine and alter the votes. Also, in order to control the entire procedure from electronic voting to electoral results and tracking the outcomes, a central system is required. Voters are not completely secure as vote can be targeted easily. It also possesses a great threat to the right to vote and transparency. For long, different e-voting systems have been provided with the goal of increasing security and minimizing cost. With the launch of Ethereum, a decentralized platform which runs decentralized applications on it, a secured voting system now seems possible. Making a project successful requires hard work and study. For study purposes, some previous works have been studied and gathered a lot of information which makes the project possible. The job portal-based application and some other things have been learned from the study. The methodology is a very important process for a project. Without this process, a project can’t build up properly. It is a blueprint of a project. This project has used a static waterfall methodology which has a feedback path from one phase to its existing phase. It will allow accounts connected to the network to vote in the election and all votes come in the real time. Application's logical code will deploy in smart contract to a local Ethereum blockchain. It will have a test-driven development (TDD) part, means tests against the smart contract to ensure that the code is bug free. It will also have a client-side application that will allow users connected to the network to interact with the smart contract and vote in the election. User-Interface will develop using HTML, CSS, Java Script. This paper provides a solution for removing inconveniences from conventional elections using blockchain that has emerged as an exciting technology for various application due to its unique characteristics that outperform other technologies. The goal of this research is to establish a system for e-voting that is decentralized rather than centralized by using blockchain technology that guarantees protection to electorate’s identity, data transfer privacy and variability by an open and transparent voting process.
Simona‐Vasilica Oprea, Adela Bârã, Anca-Ioana Andreescu, Marian Pompiliu Cristescu
Digitalization advances in many fields due to its clear advantages and facilities especially in pandemic times when crowds are to be avoided. E-voting is gaining importance as voting using laptops, mobile phones or tablets is more practical. Hence, human counting which leads to unintentional errors or fraud could be eliminated. Furthermore, software applications can reduce the costs of the classic election process and physical infrastructure. In this paper, we propose to identify the most critical specifications of an e-voting application, find a solution for elections in universities and compare our solution with others. The goal is to propose a conceptual architecture using encrypted functions and two stages: voting and validation, separating layers and roles, that is based on blockchain tables and innovative interactions between actors (voters and voting committee) and the two software components (web application and database). For replicability, the conceptual architecture is depicted and formalized using several Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams. Furthermore, in order to provide proof of concept, the initial steps in implementing the proposed solution are showcased.
Metaverse is expected to rely on massive Internet of Things (IoT) connections so it inherits various security threats from the IoT network and also faces other sophisticated attacks related to virtual reality technology. As traditional security approaches show various limitations in the large-scale distributed metaverse, this paper proposes MetaCIDS, a novel collaborative intrusion detection (CID) framework that leverages metaverse devices to collaboratively protect the metaverse. In MetaCIDS, a federated learning (FL) scheme based on unsupervised au-toencoder and an attention-based supervised classifier enables metaverse users to train a CID model using their local network data, while the blockchain network allows metaverse users to train a machine learning (ML) model to detect intrusion network flows over their monitored local network traffic, then submit verifiable intrusion alerts to the blockchain to earn metaverse tokens. Security analysis shows that MetaCIDS can efficiently detect zero-day attacks, while the training process is resistant to SPoF, data tampering, and up to 33% poisoning nodes. Performance evaluation illustrates the efficiency of MetaCIDS with 96% to 99% detection accuracy on four different network intrusion datasets, supporting both multi-class detection using labeled data and anomaly detection trained on unlabeled data.
This thesis deals with the analysis of the blockchain used for Bitcoin. Blockchain is a distributed database of all transactions made with this cryptocurrency. Its public availability represents the possibility of examining the transfer of funds between all users. However, they appear in transactions under anonymous addresses, the number of which is practically unlimited. The main goal of our work is to find a clustering of addresses corresponding to their belonging to real users. In this work, we propose new heuristics that can be used in clustering. The main benefit is a method that uses the properties of transactions created very quickly one after the other. Furthermore, we analyze the problem of the formation of a supercluster containing a disproportionately large number of addresses and propose a way in which the cluster can be appropriately partitioned. 1
Cyber-attacks are becoming more common against Internet users due to the increasing dependency on online communication in their daily lives. X.509 Public-Key Infrastructure (PKIX) is the most widely adopted and used system to secure online communications and digital identities. However, different attack vectors exist against the PKIX system, which attackers exploit to breach the security of the reliant protocols. Recently, various projects (e.g., Let’s Encrypt and Google Certificate Transparency) have been started to encrypt online communications, fix PKIX vulnerabilities, and guard Internet users against cyber-attacks. This survey focuses on classical PKIX proposals, certificate revocation proposals, and their implementation on blockchain as well as ledger technologies. First, we discuss the PKIX architecture, the history of the World Wide Web, the certificate issuance process, and possible attacks on the certificate issuance process. Second, a taxonomy of PKIX proposals, revocation proposals, and their modern implementation is provided. Then, a set of evaluation metrics is defined for comparison. Finally, the leading proposals are compared using 15 evaluation metrics and 13 cyber-attacks before presenting the lessons learned and suggesting future PKIX and revocation research.
Karlo Angelo F. Cabugwang, Raphael Christen K. Enriquez, Bienvenido E. Villabroza, Christian Pulmano
There are cases of corruption and fraud within the Philippine government that have gone under the radar, often due to a lack of transparency and verifiability. The objective of this study is to prototype a blockchain network that can run a government process as a decentralized application such that it can enhance transparency and verifiability in the public sector. This can be accomplished by identifying a government process that would be converted into a decentralized application. One of these processes would be converted into a decentralized application. Afterwards, a blockchain framework should be identified — one which can create a public permissioned blockchain network. This framework can be used to design and implement the prototype blockchain network which the decentralized application can run on. The final prototype constitutes of smart contracts deployed on an Ethereum test network with a web frontend to easily interact with it. Mechanisms of the application that are deemed necessary to transparency and verifiability of the system are also identified. Finally, the variable cost of the system and possible limitation is explored in the paper. In this regard, the prototype offers a foundation with which other decentralized applications can follow and build upon. This is to promote transparency and verifiability within and among government processes.