Abel Yeboah-Ofori, Sayed Kashif Sadat, Iman Darvishi
Blockchain security issues in relation to encryption for data privacy and integrity in cloud computing have become challenging due to the decentralized and peer-to-peer systems for securing data storage and transfer in smart contracts. Further, Blockchain technology continues revolutionizing how we handle data, from improving transparency to enhancing security. However, various instances of data breaches, piracy, and hacking attacks have compromised the safety measures employed by these providers. The paper aims to explore Blockchain technology and how encryption algorithms are used to leverage security properties to uphold data privacy and integrity in a cloud environment to enhance security. The novelty contribution of the paper is threefold. First, we explore existing blockchain attacks, vulnerabilities, and their impact on the cloud computing environment supported by numerous cloud services that enable clients to store and share data online. Secondly, we used an encryption approach to detect data security by combining AES encryption, cloud storage, and Ethereum smart contracts in cloud AWS S3. Finally, we recommend control mechanisms to improve blockchain security in the cloud environment. The paper results show that AES algorithms can be used in blockchain smart contracts to enhance security, privacy, and integrity to ensure secure data in transit and at rest.
Abstract Access control of data that are outsourced to cloud storage is a challenging problem because data owners lose direct control over outsourced data. Attribute‐based encryption (ABE) is a potential cryptographic solution to provide confidentiality and flexible sharing of these outsourced data. However, the traditional ABE schemes do not meet the need of the current dynamic environment where data access not only considers the user's static and inherent attributes but also takes the user's contextual information such as location and time of access. This paper presents an improved ABE scheme using blockchain technology that can handle the frequently changing location and time attributes of data users efficiently, leading to support for fine‐grained access control of cloud storage embedding contextual information in the access policy of ABE. A prototype implementation of the proposed ABE scheme using solidity on the Ethereum platform and the experimental evaluation in terms of performance and execution cost shows a promising result.
Mariia Bakhtina, K. Leung, Raimundas Matulevičius, Ahmed Awad · 5 authors
X-Road is an open-source solution that acts as a data exchange layer and enables secure data exchange between organisations. X-Road serves as the backbone of digital infrastructure in the public sector (e.g., enabling Estonia’s digital public services) and private sector (e.g., enabling clients’ data exchange in the Japanese energy sector). An approach and architecture were recently proposed for the X-Road data exchange systems to move from public key infrastructure (PKI) with centralised certification authorities to decentralised PKI (DPKI). In this paper, we develop a proof of concept for the designed DPKI-based architecture that leverages distributed ledger-based identifiers and verifiable credentials to establish trust between information systems using Hyperledger Indy and Hyperledger Aries. We evaluate the proof of concept implementation against the design and functional requirements. The results show that the proposed system architecture is technically feasible and satisfies the identified design goals and functional requirements. To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first open-access system prototype for an organisation’s identity management following self-sovereign identity principles. The presented proof of concept proves that DPKI helps to address some of the scalability issues of PKI, improve control over identity and mitigate replay attacks and a single point of failure in the X-Road system.
Tayeb Kenaza, Sami Messai, Islam Debicha, Mehdi Sehaki
Abstract Electronic Health Records (EHRs) store sensitive and critical patient information, necessitating stringent access control and sharing mechanisms to uphold data security and comply with privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In this paper, we propose a comprehensive architecture and a suite of efficient protocols that leverage the synergistic capabilities of blockchain and Interplanetary File System (IPFS) technologies to enable secure access control and sharing of EHRs. Our approach is based on a private blockchain, wherein smart contracts are deployed to enforce control exclusively by patients. By granting patients exclusive control over their EHRs, our solution ensures compliance with personal data protection laws and empowers individuals to manage their health information autonomously. Notably, our proposed architecture seamlessly integrates with existing health provider information systems, facilitating interoperability and effectively addressing security and data heterogeneity challenges. To exhibit the effectiveness of our approach, we developed a prototype implementation utilizing the Ethereum platform, enabling the simulation of diverse scenarios involving access control and health data sharing among healthcare practitioners. Our experimental results demonstrate the scalability, recovery mechanisms, and revocation procedures embedded within our solution, thereby substantiating its efficacy and robustness in real-world healthcare settings. Overall, our study provides a significant contribution towards a secure and interoperable framework for EHR access control and sharing, leveraging patient-centric control mechanisms.
With the application of blockchain in Internet of Things (IoT), various IoT scenario-oriented blockchains have been proposed, meaning that multichain future within IoT ecosystem is growing. Cross-chain interoperability thus is essential. Sidechains is one of the crucial technologies for cross-chain interoperability, which allows blockchains to interoperate with each other. However, sidechains encounters practicability challenges impeding adoption, such as poor generality and inefficiency. In this article, we propose practical and secure sidechain construction (PSSC)in the form of parent-child chains, a practical and secure sidechains construction for heterogeneous blockchains orienting IoT scenarios. To achieve practicability, we first utilize succinct noninteractive argument of knowledge (SNARK), which is succinct noninteractive proof (arguments) of knowledge, to reproduce the state transition of blockchains, so that PSSC can get rid of the constraints on consensus mechanisms of blockchains; we then design an impawn-punish mechanism based on smart contract, which transfers the work verifying SNARK proof from mainchain to sidechain, preventing fork threat to mainchain. Due to employing SNARK based on recursive proof composition to generate cross-chain proof, our PSSC is more efficient with succinct cross-chain proof, reducing the overhead of storage of nodes. Besides, we formally prove our PSSC satisfies the three fundamental security properties of sidechains: 1) persistence; 2) liveness; and 3) firewall. Finally, we develop a proof-of-concept implementation of PSSC, and the experimental results show that the proof size of PSSC is about 28.8 kB, which is roughly$2094\times $,$9.36\times $,$6.56\times $,$4.23\times $, and$3.27\times $smaller than BTCRelay proof, PoW sidechains proof, PoS sidechains, zkRelay proof, and fast sidechains, respectively.
This paper analyzes the current status of the engineering supervision process in construction and infrastructure projects in China. It discusses the existing problems, such as low efficiency of supervision, distorted monitoring data, resource waste, and environmental damage. Based on extensive literature research and combining the consensus mechanism, ECDSA encryption algorithm and so on, the paper proposes the idea of integrating blockchain technology with the engineering supervision process. This includes the decision of blockchain type, the use of digital signature technology to implement responsibility, and the construction of a hybrid blockchain system using the blockchain's consensus mechanism. The paper presents the general design, the design of the system structures, and the design of modules of the system. Through this system, project participants can verify their identities and share sensitive information confidentially, thereby improving the efficiency of supervision work and preventing data forgery, reducing resource waste, decreasing carbon emissions, and minimizing environmental damage.
A promising approach to building a distributed platform for shared data that is unchangeable, trustworthy, dependable, and accessible is blockchainbased drug traceability. The Hyperledger fabric and Hyperledger Besu methodologies are used in this article to provide a complete study and summary of the present state of drug traceability distribution research on the blockchain technology in enterprise platform. The Hyperledger Fabric and Besu blockchainbased platforms satisfy critical requirements for medication traceability, including privacy, reliability, transparency, security, authorisation, authentication, and scalability. Drug supply chain transactions are carried out skill fully and securely by the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform among a dispersed network of stakeholders. Various pharmaceutical stakeholder groups comprise this fabricenabled private, permissioned distributed network, which supports the efficient and secure execution of medication in supply chain transactions in enterprise system. This study also explains how blockchain technology is benefiting the healthcare industry while showcasing some of its disruptive aspects that have the potential to alter current enterprise application in drug tracking procedures.
Saeed Ranjbar Alvar, Mohammad Akbari, David Yue, Yong Zhang
In today's digital world, enterprises and individuals are generating massive data that is potentially useful for many data consumers with data driven applications. The emergence of data marketplaces is a step toward helping the data owners to monetize their digital assets and get connected to the potential buyers. The current data marketplaces cannot handle the challenges related to data ownership claims, illegal redistribution, and data ownership traceability. To overcome these problems in a general-purpose market, we propose a marketplace based on watermarking and Non-Fungible Token (NFT) technologies. In the proposed NFT-based marketplace, the owner's data is stored as an NFT where the underlying content of the NFT holds the watermarked data. The watermarked data is obtained by embedding some information about the owners and the buyers into the original data. The embedded information can later be extracted to identify the owner and the buyer of the traded data. Furthermore, the transactions corresponding to the NFT provide verifiable ownership proof and traceable ownership history. A Proof-Of-Concept (POC) implementation of the proposed marketplace that will be integrated within AI-Gallery Data Marketplace service in Huawei Cloud is presented for trading image data. An extensive set of experiments to measure the gas consumption on the blockchain and evaluate the robustness of the watermarked assets against 51 attacks are performed. Finally, a method based on error correction codes is proposed for improving the watermarking robustness in the implemented marketplace. The link for the codes and the POC demo is provided in the appendix.
Stealth addresses are a privacy-enhancing technology that provides recipient anonymity on blockchains. In this work, we investigate the recipient anonymity and unlinkability guarantees of Umbra, the most widely used implementation of the stealth address scheme on Ethereum, and its three off-chain scalability solutions, i.e., Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon. Specifically, we define and evaluate four heuristics to uncover the real recipients of stealth payments. We find that for the majority of Umbra payments, it is straightforward to establish the recipient, hence nullifying the benefits of using Umbra. In particular, we identify the real recipient of 48.5%, 25.8%, 65.7%, and 52.6% of all Umbra transactions on the Ethereum main net, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism networks, respectively. Finally, we suggest easily implementable countermeasures to evade our deanonymization and linking attacks.
A large amount of raw data collected by satellites is processed by the production chain to obtain a large amount of product data, of which the secure exchange and storage is of interest to researchers in the field of remote sensing information science. Authentic, secure data is a critical foundation for data analysis and decision-making. And traditional centralized cloud computing systems are vulnerable to attacks, and once the central server is successfully attacked, all data will be lost. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is an innovative computer technology that can ensure information security, traceability and tamper-proof, and can be applied to the field of remote sensing. Although there are many advantages to using DLT in remote sensing applications, there are some obstacles and limitations to its application. Remote sensing data has the characteristics of large data volume, spatiotemporal nature, global and so on, and it is difficult to store and interconnect remote sensing data in the blockchain. To address these issues, this paper proposes a trustworthy and decentralized system using blockchain. The novelty of this paper is to propose a multi-level blockchain architecture in which the system collects remote sensing data and stores it in the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) network, after generating the IPFS hash, the network rehashes the value again and uploads it on the Ethereum chain for public query. Distributed data storage improves data security, supports the secure exchange of information, and improves the efficiency of data management.
Vyacheslav Petrenko, Фариза Тебуева, Igor Struchkov, Sergey Ryabtsev
Objective . The purpose of the work is to increase the efficiency of the functioning of agents of a cyber-physical system in the presence of agents with incorrect or malicious behavior. The goal is achieved by establishing a trusted interaction between agents and quick detection of malicious impact. Method . Trusted interaction is carried out using distributed ledger technology and agent confidence indicators. The novelty of the proposed solution lies in the fact that information about the actions of agents is stored and aggregated using smart contracts at specified time intervals. Each agent keeps a local copy of the agent interaction chain. If several agents interact with each other, then they exchange information stored in their copies of the ledger. Result . To test the proposed method, we implemented it in C++. For the experiments, the scenario of collective perception by agents of a decentralized cyber-physical environment in a specialized simulation program Contiki Cooja was used. Conclusion . The method implemented using the solutions proposed in this work showed higher efficiency than the method based on the dynamic calculation of the confidence index. The proposed solutions can be applied not only in cyber-physical systems, but also in any other systems with decentralized control.
The security of the traditional data sharing scheme is generally based on the trust of both sides, less consideration of security, and generally need a trusted party for scheduling. However, in the standardization process of power information system, participating users are mutually distrusting, and it is difficult to balance decentralization, efficiency, cost and verifiability requirements. To address these challenges, we propose a novel data sharing architecture. The architecture of this paper can meet the key characteristics of distributed data sharing, namely decentralization, trust flow, supervision, and can realize the necessary security requirements of standardized data sharing. In addition, we deploy the scheme and implemented in two test networks of the well-known blockchain Ethereum. The results show that our scheme has better operating efficiency and stability, and is suitable for practical application.
Blockchain-based decentralized identity management provides a promising solution to improve the security and privacy of healthcare systems and make them scalable. Traditional Identity Management Systems are centralized, which makes them single-point-of-failure, vulnerable to attacks and data breaches, and non-scalable. In contrast, decentralized identity management based on the blockchain can ensure secure and transparent access to patient data while preserving privacy. This approach enables patients to control their personal health data while granting permission for medical personnel to access specific information as needed. We propose a decentralized identity management system for healthcare systems named BDIMHS based on a permissioned blockchain with Hyperledger Indy and Hyperledger Aries. We develop further descriptions of required functionalities and provide high-level procedures for network initialization, enrollment, registration, issuance, verification and revocation functionalities. The proposed solution improves data security, privacy, immutability, interoperability, and patient autonomy by using selective disclosure, zero-knowledge proofs, Decentralized Identifiers, and Verifiable Credentials. Furthermore, we discuss the potential challenges associated with implementing this technology in healthcare and evaluate the performance and security of the proposed solution.
Esa Fauzi, Sy Yuliani, Yenie Syukriyah, Azizah Zakiah
Single Sign-On (SSO) is a mechanism that allows users to access various services using a single set of login credentials. However, in SSO implementations, there are still challenges related to security and authentication management, particularly attacks targeting the Identity Provider (IDP). To address this, the use of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) as proof of IDP ownership has been proposed as a solution to enhance security in the authentication mechanism. The utilization of NFTs in SSO with OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 has the potential to improve security and convenience in the authentication process due to the unique and non-duplicable nature of NFTs. The results of this research present a model and design of SSO with NFTs on OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0. An SSO application with login, register, and password recovery features was also developed to provide convenience to users during the login process. The findings conclude that the utilization of NFTs in SSO with OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 has the potential to enhance security and convenience in the authentication mechanism. Further research is needed to explore aspects such as scalability, in-depth security analysis, testing in real-world scenarios, improvement of integration and interoperability, as well as comparative analysis with other SSO technologies.
Zhijian Liu, Zihan Shen, Hongfei Wang, Qianjia Zou
With the increasing amount and trading volume, account security has become an issue that people have to consider. The security of Ethereum is discussed in four different aspects. This paper reviews the application of cryptography in Ethereum, including the importance of relevant hash algorithms and digital signature techniques for securing data. The basic structure of the Merkle Tree and the role of its modified data structure, performed in the security mechanism of Ethereum are also analyzed. This paper also analyzes the related Merkle Proof algorithm. Additionally, the definition and working mechanism of Gas in Ethereum are also provided, through which the operating mechanism and creation method of Gas can guarantee the security of Ethereum's processing power. Finally, this paper indicates the underlying vulnerabilities and possible attacks on Bitcoin and Ethereum, including double spending attacks under proof of work and further introduces the related solutions. This paper can provide researchers good references on Ethereum security problem.
Due to its multivariate and multipurpose use and reuse, data’s worth is dramatically increasing, leading to an era characterized by the generation of data marketplaces towards accessing, selling, sharing, and trading data and data assets. However, most market vendors still follow a centralized monolithic cloud model for controlling most of the market for data services. Also, this strategy is incompatible with European objectives for cloud computing and the data economy, lacking data sovereignty and cross-cloud interoperability principles. Towards these limitations, the FAME project is introduced as a joint effort in the fields of data management, data technologies, data economy, and digital finance to develop, deploy and launch to the global market a unique, trustworthy, energy efficient, and secure federated data marketplace for Embedded Finance (EmFi). This marketplace is envisioned to alleviate the proclaimed limitations of centralized cloud data marketplaces towards demonstrating the full potential of the data economy. Security, interoperability, decentralized and regulatory compliant data exchange, data assets’ trading and pricing, as well as integration of trusted and energy efficient analytics are among the core functionalities of FAME, which aims to act as a single-entry point data marketplace for the EmFi domain. FAME will be evaluated upon different real-world use cases covering the financial industry, building a vibrant community of EmFi stakeholders around the envisioned marketplace.
Managing and exchanging sensitive information securely is a paramount concern for the scientific and cybersecurity community. The increasing reliance on computing workflows and digital data transactions requires ensuring that sensitive information is protected from unauthorized access, tampering, or misuse. This research paper presents a comparative analysis of three novel approaches for authenticating and securing access to scientific data: SciTokens, Verifiable Credentials, and Smart Contracts. The aim of this study is to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of each approach from trust, revocation, privacy, and security perspectives. We examine the technical features and privacy and security mechanisms of each technology and provide a comparative synthesis with the proposed model. Through our analysis, we demonstrate that each technology offers unique advantages and limitations, and the integration of these technologies can lead to more secure and efficient solutions for authentication and access to scientific data.
Javier Arcenegui, Rosario Arjona, Iluminada Baturone
Ethereum is a dynamic blockchain that grows every day thanks to a community that creates and decides on various of its issues. The community participates through Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) at many levels, from proposals that describe new standards for the creation of new tokens to proposals that define new ways for the Ethereum main network to generate new blocks. This paper describes how an Ethereum Request for Comments (ERC)-type EIP, the ERC-4519, was proposed last year to standardize the way to define non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing assets that can generate their own Ethereum addresses and obey users and owners. Advantages provided by ERC-4519 in several use cases are illustrated. The examples show the facilities and the security improvements introduced in the management of both physical and digital assets by their owners and users. Particularly, use cases with physical assets such as IoT devices are illustrated.