Blockchain technology has drawn increasing interest in recent years as a technology that will dominate a wide range of industries in the future The non-fungible token is a brand-new kind of Ethereum - based token that is unique and indivisible (NFT). Recently, investors have shown a lot of interest in a specific category of blockchain-based virtual assets called NFTs. Since the beginning of 2021, the phenomenon and its marketplaces have expanded considerably. The Ethereum network is used in this project to demonstrate and test the concept of digital ownership transfers and control. This project offers the ability to create, purchase, sell, and trade NFTs. This experiment shows how the reader can generate an NFT token on their own using the Ethereum network’s ERC721 token standard. Moreover, it addresses distribution and setup. Yet it is the another case for the blockchain which is the possibility of making money with it. This application’s users will be able to buy and sell NFTs using the virtual currency, Ether.
Outsourced Proofs of Retrievability (OPoR) with private verification enables a third party verifier to periodically check cloud data on behalf of users. However, such a scheme requires the verifier to keep a copy of the user's data and generate tags for the data like the data owner. In other words, in addition to storing the data and tags from the user, the cloud server also needs to store tags uploaded by the verifier. To overcome this limitation, we propose a concrete construction of outsourced privately verifiable PoR (OPVPoR) without requiring the additional tag storage from the verifier. Furthermore, we extend the OPVPoR scheme to the multi-user setting and build a MOPVPoR scheme, where users storing the same data to the cloud server also share the tag information to further reduce the storage cost. Finally, we implement both schemes to evaluate their performance in practice.
Summary Every transaction is made public and verified by a third party, and the transparency of blockchain applications leads to privacy leaks. Everyone can access the transaction, making it easier for network analysis to identify the user's identity, which is a major problem with the blockchain. Financial institutions have become hesitant to adopt blockchain technology; as a result, preventing its spread. To confirm that encryption and security are maintained for transactions in the blockchain, this research introduces a zero‐knowledge proof (ZKP) based transaction validation scheme. To increase the security of blockchain applications, the proposed lattice‐based blind ring signature (LBRS) scheme integrates blind and ring signatures and is applied to sensitive data. The data are encrypted using this encryption scheme before being stored with the transactional information in the blocks. The encrypted data is then stored in the blocks, which users can retrieve after verification. The encrypted data is then stored in blocks, which users can retrieve after verification. A verification scheme based on the ZKP is used to prevent unauthorized access and changes to the data. The proposed LBRS scheme meets the security analysis requirement. The performance of an LBRS scheme is compared to other relevant models in terms of execution time, encryption time, and decryption time. Overall, the results are more encouraging and reassuring than other relevant works of interest. Finally, this model provides better computational security and satisfies the requirements like correctness and security analysis.
<strong>Blockchain technology is a distributed ledger system that is secured by cryptography. This makes it very difficult to tamper with or hack blockchain-based transactions. Additionally, blockchain can be used to automate transactions, which can save time and money. This paper explores the potential of blockchain technology to revolutionize the way we make transactions. We discuss the benefits of blockchain technology, such as its security, efficiency, and transparency. We also discuss the challenges of blockchain technology, such as its scalability and regulation. We conclude that blockchain technology has the potential to make transactions more secure, efficient, and transparent. However, there are still challenges to overcome before blockchain technology can be widely adopted.</strong>
Khaled Ahmed, Sabry F. Saraya, John F. Wanis, Hesham Ali
Open finance is evolving and extending open banking. This creates a large context that implies a financial and identity data exchange paradigm, which faces challenges to balance customer experience, security, and the self-control over personal identity information. We propose Self-Sovereign Banking Identity (SSBI), a Blockchain-based self-sovereign identity (SSI) to secure private data sharing by utilizing trusted customer’s banking cards as a key storage and identity transaction-signing enclave. The design and implementation of the SSI framework is based on the Veramo SDK and Ethereum to overcome the limitation of signing curve availability on the current banking Java Cards needed for Hyperledger Indy. SSBI uses the elliptic curve SECP256K1 for transaction signing, which exists for several payment cards in the market. SSBI enables automated financial services and trust in the service provider communication. This work analyzes the flow and framework components, and evaluates the usability, integration, and performance in terms of throughput, latency, security, and complexity. Furthermore, the proposed approach is compared with related solutions. The presented prototype implementation is based on a test Ethereum network and signing transactions on the banking card. The preliminary results show that SSBI provides an effective solution for integrating the customer’s banking cards to secure open banking identity exchange. Furthermore, it allows the integration of several scenarios to support trusted open banking. The Blockchain layer settings need to be scaled and improved before real-world implementation.
Chihiro Kado, Naoto Yanai, Jason Paul Cruz, Kyosuke Yamashita · 5 authors
Vulnerabilities of Ethereum smart contracts often cause serious financial damage. Whereas the Solidity compiler has been updated to prevent vulnerabilities, its effectiveness has not been revealed so far, to the best of our knowledge. In this paper, we shed light on the impact of compiler versions of vulnerabilities of Ethereum smart contracts. To this end, we collected 503,572 contracts with Solidity source codes in the Ethereum blockchain and then analyzed their vulnerabilities. For three vulnerabilities with high severity, i.e., Locked Money, Using tx.origin, and Unchecked Call, we show that their appearance rates are decreased by virtue of major updates of the Solidity compiler. We then found the following four key insights. First, after the release of version 0.6, the appearance rate for Locked Money has decreased. Second, regardless of compiler updates, the appearance rate for Using tx.origin is significantly low. Third, although the appearance rate for Unchecked Call has decreased in version 0.8, it still remains high due to various factors, including code clones. Fourth, through analysis of code clones, our promising results show that the appearance rate for Unchecked Call can be further decreased by removing the code clones.
With the development of cloud services and the Internet of Things, the integration of heterogeneous systems is becoming increasingly complex. Identity management is important in the coordination of various systems, and public key infrastructure (PKI) is widely known as an identity management methods. In PKI, a certificate authority (CA) acts as a trust point to guarantee the identity of entities such as users, devices, and services. However, traditional CAs that delegate the operations to a specific organization are not always suitable for heterogeneous services, and a new methodology is required to enable multiple stakeholders to securely and cooperatively operate a CA. In this study, we introduce the concept of a consortium CA and propose a distributed public key certificate-issuing infrastructure that realizes a consortium CA. The proposed infrastructure enables multiple organizations to cooperatively operate a CA suitable for services involving multiple stakeholders. We identify four requirements for the cooperative operation of a consortium CA and design the proposed infrastructure with distributed ledger technology. Furthermore, we present the implementation of smart contracts with Hyperledger Fabric and prove that the proposed infrastructure satisfies the four requirements. Finally, we confirm that certificate issuance and verification are stable at approximately 4 and 3 ms, respectively.
Faton Kabashi, Vehbi Neziri, Halil Snopçe, Artan Luma · 6 authors
Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the way Higher Education operates. Blockchain is a decentralized and secure database that can store and manage digital information without the need for a centralized authority. This technology can be applied in Higher Education to improve the security, transparency, and efficiency of academic and administrative processes such as student records, credentials verification, and payment processing. Additionally, blockchainbased platforms can provide new opportunities for collaboration and credentialing that could enhance the learning experience for students. While there are still some challenges to be overcome, such as regulatory issues and the need for interoperability, the potential benefits of blockchain in Higher Education are significant and worth exploring. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible applications of blockchain technology in Higher Education institutions and to provide a proposal/scheme of a blockchain-based academic and career record system in Higher Education. The system being proposed is composed of three layers, which are the data, blockchain, and application layers. It is distinguished by decentralized control, secure transactions, and privacy protection.
Xiaodong Yang, Wenjia Wang, Tian Tian, Caifen Wang
With the rapid development of the IIoT, security and privacy issues have become increasingly prominent when the data from IIoT devices are shared across public networks. Very recently, Wang et al. presented a blockchain-based CLS scheme for IIoT devices in order to achieve secure and lightweight communication (IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, DOI: 10.1109/TII.2021.3084753). Wang et al. claimed that their CLS scheme is secure under the assumption of the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem. Unfortunately, by providing two attack methods to analyze the security of Wang et al.’s CLS scheme, we find that it is insecure against universal forgery attacks. Without knowing any information about the target user's private key, the two categories of attackers can successfully forge the valid signature of any message. Hence, Wang et al.’s CLS scheme fails to achieve the claimed security goals. To fix the security flaws, we propose an enhanced blockchain-based and pairing-free CLS scheme, and prove its security in the random oracle model. Furthermore, the analysis results demonstrate that our revised scheme has higher security while keeping the performance of the original scheme.
Matteo Loporchio, Anna Bernasconi, Damiano Di Francesco Maesa, Laura Ricci
Set accumulators are cryptographic primitives used to represent arbitrarily large sets of elements with a single constant-size value and to efficiently verify whether a value belongs to that set. Accumulators support the generation of membership proofs, meaning that they can certify the presence of a given value among the elements of a set. In this paper we present an overview of the theoretical concepts underlying set accumulators, we compare the most popular constructions from a complexity perspective, and we survey a number of their applications related to blockchain technology. In particular, we focus on four different use cases: query authentication, stateless transactions validation, anonymity enhancement, and identity management. For each of these scenarios, we examine the main problems they introduce and discuss the most relevant accumulator-based solutions proposed in the literature. Finally, we point out the common approaches between the proposals and highlight the currently open problems in each field.
A. Pandiaraj, P. Nagaraj, Pramod Kumar, P. Rasi · 6 authors
Blockchain technology is defined as any concept or protocol that enables the blockchain's functionality. An electronic health record (EHR), which is a digital representation of patient health data that is outsourced to the cloud, frequently includes a patient's contact information, pulse rate, medical history, current medication, and previous medicines. However, many healthcare firms are impacted by the security and privacy issues brought on by data leaks in cloud-based EHRs. This research study proposes a secure distributed cloud-based medical blockchain to address network security and data privacy issues for e-health systems, as well as security and confidentiality issues when sharing patient health data with other healthcare providers. The actual results indicate that our approach offers a solid method for transferring data on mobile platforms while safeguarding private health data from potential threats. The system analysis and security analysis demonstrate performance benefits in the lightweight access control system design, minimal network latency, high levels of data, and security privacy when compared to the previous data sharing models.
Metaverse technology comprises of a virtual world and physical world running in parallel. Metaverse is evolving day by day and has many applications across domains. In this paper, we focus on the Education domain and especially student training related use cases such as inter-disciplinary research, field visits, campus exchange programs, remote learning, virtual trainings, etc. In such user scenarios, multiple virtual and physical worlds come together in metaverse using technologies like Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and Extended Reality (XR). In such Metaverse environments, avatars, users, and devices interact with one another. While interacting, they use the conventional centralized architecture for authentication and identity management. Due to its centralized nature, such architectures are susceptible to various authentication security issues such as impersonation, identity interoperability, mutual authentication, replay, server spoofing, etc. For the student training related use cases, Avatars are moving across multiple Edu-verses. There are certain decentralized solutions proposed in the literature for the authentication and identity management for Avatars. But they come with their own limitations. Also, none of them talk about the authentication interoperability across verses. In this paper, Blockchain is proposed as a solution for the secure and interoperable authentication and identity management for the authentication of Avatars and users for the student training use cases.
Shaik Khaleelullah, Sai Teja Vangapalli, Malavika Gaddam, Vitesh Sai Hanumakonda · 5 authors
Document forgery has become a significant concern recently due to the rapid development of modern technology and the simplicity of obtaining inexpensive, cutting-edge workplace supplies. Numerous cases of academic certificate fraud have been documented due to the lack of an effective anti-forgery system. Due to the lack of an effective anti-forgery system, incidents that result in the academic certificate being faked are frequently observed. As a result, methods for educational credential verification and authentication are becoming more and more necessary. Blockchain technology offers a promising solution for creating a secure, transparent, and immutable system for storing and verifying academic records. This paper proposes a permissioned blockchain-based system for verifying academic records using Hyperledger Fabric and InterPlanetary File System(IPFS). Hyperledger Fabric is a distributed ledger platform that supports smart contracts and private transactions among authorized participants. IPFS is a peer-to-peer file system that enables decentralized data storage and retrieval. The system allows academic institutions to issue digital certificates to their graduates and store them on IPFS. The hash of the certificates is then recorded on the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain. When a process is started to check if an academic certificate is real, the credentials are pulled from the off-chain database, and their hashes are generated. This hash is then compared to a hash that is already on the Blockchain. The suggested model completely satisfies all digital document verification system requirements by addressing the shortcomings and challenges in the current document verification methods.
Scalability has grown more important as blockchain technology is adopted. This study introduces RSA-accumulator-based stateless blockchain performance optimization. Verifiable computing technology and distributed design compress node state data and prove smart contract validity, while a new smart contract execution logic and transaction verification scheme solve the problem of transaction verification and execution under stateless conditions, increasing system throughput. The technique reduces consensus node storage and improves throughput compared to Ethereum blockchains, according to experiments. This study examines the scheme's concept, implementation, and blockchain scalability potential.
The higher education management systems first identified and realized the trap of pitting innovation against privacy while first addressing COVID-19 social isolation challenges in 2020. In the age of data sprawl, we observe the situation has been exacerbating since then. Integrating blockchain technology has the potential to address the recent and emerging challenges in the higher education management system. This paper unravels the Good (scopes and benefits), Bad (limitations), and Ugly (challenges and trade-offs) of blockchain technology integration in the higher education management paradigm in the existing landscape. Our study adopts both qualitative and quantitative approaches to explore the experiences of educators, researchers, students, and other stakeholders and fully understand the blockchain's potential and contextual challenges. Our findings will envision an efficient, secure, and transparent higher education management system and help shape the debate (and trade-offs) pertaining to the recent shift in relevant business and management climate and regulatory sentiment.
As the significance of blockchain innovation grows and the focus on scalability intensifies, rollup technology has emerged as a promising approach to tackle these scalability concerns. Nonetheless, rollups encounter restrictions when interacting with other rollups, leading to diminished throughput, increased latency, higher fees, and a complex user experience in transactions between rollups. In this paper, we put forth a novel system that employs batch settlement techniques to augment the efficiency of transfers between rollups. Our proposed system comprises a settlement rollup responsible for batch settling transfers among rollups and a smart contract structure that carries out the settlements. Notably, we utilize a zero-knowledge proof algorithm to guarantee the computational integrity of the settlement rollup while ensuring security through Ethereum smart contracts for proof verification and settlement execution. By implementing this approach, the proposed system can effectively and securely execute asset transfers between rollups, ultimately improving their scalability and usability. Consequently, our research provides a fresh perspective on resolving the challenges of throughput, latency, and fees associated with transfer systems.
Ethereum leverages ECDSA as the digital signature scheme to validate transactions. From the provable security standpoint, ECDSA built on an 80-bit security Elliptic Curve group can achieve at most 50-bit concrete security, rather than 80-bit security, due to its reduction loss for$2^{30}$signature queries in security analysis. The state-of-the-art ECDSA scheme comes with no de facto formal security guarantee. Although there have been many signatures with higher concrete security, their structures are quite different from ECDSA and a total replacement of the signature field in Ethereum will incur high deployment cost. In this work, we present EthereumX without compromising the signature structure in Ethereum while achieves better security. The security gain is built on top of a new technique named randomness preprocessing module (RPM), which can securely pre-generate and verify randomness with the help of Ethereum. Calling RPM allows to pre-select randomness, which will be used for the subsequent signature, and to verify the randomness, assuring that it is previously generated. We give an instantiation with formal security guarantee and prove that it can be improved to 80-bit concrete security under the same discrete logarithm assumption as ECDSA. From this instantiated scheme, we implement EthereumX via a deployment into a locally simulated network. Experiment results show that EthereumX costs 5 seconds for a block generation which is equal to Ethereum, and generates/verifies at least$17017/10623$transactions per second that is practical enough in application, even if they are slightly slower than Ethereum which generates/verifies at least$17908/11257$transactions per second. We also mention that RMP can be applied to other DL-based signatures for the security improvement.
Joonyoung Lee, Myeonghyun Kim, Kisung Park, Sungkee Noh · 7 authors
Recently, with the increasing application of the Internet of Things (IoT), various IoT environments such as smart factories, smart homes, and smart grids are being generated. In the IoT environment, a lot of data are generated in real time, and the generated IoT data can be used as source data for various services such as artificial intelligence, remote medical care, and finance, and can also be used for purposes such as electricity bill generation. Therefore, data access control is required to grant access rights to various data users in the IoT environment who need such IoT data. In addition, IoT data contain sensitive information such as personal information, so privacy protection is also essential. Ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) technology has been utilized to address these requirements. Furthermore, system structures applying blockchains with CP-ABE are being studied to prevent bottlenecks and single failures of cloud servers, as well as to support data auditing. However, these systems do not stipulate authentication and key agreement to ensure the security of the data transmission process and data outsourcing. Accordingly, we propose a data access control and key agreement scheme using CP-ABE to ensure data security in a blockchain-based system. In addition, we propose a system that can provide data nonrepudiation, data accountability, and data verification functions by utilizing blockchains. Both formal and informal security verifications are performed to demonstrate the security of the proposed system. We also compare the security, functional aspects, and computational and communication costs of previous systems. Furthermore, we perform cryptographic calculations to analyze the system in practical terms. As a result, our proposed protocol is safer against attacks such as guessing attacks and tracing attacks than other protocols, and can provide mutual authentication and key agreement functions. In addition, the proposed protocol is more efficient than other protocols, so it can be applied to practical IoT environments.
The privacy and security of patients' health records have been an ongoing issue, and researchers are in a race against technology to design a system that can help stop the compromising of patient data. Many researchers have proposed solutions; however, most solutions have not incorporated potential parameters that can ensure private and secure personal health records management, which is the focus of this study. To design and develop a solution, this research thoroughly investigated existing solutions and identified potential key contexts. These include IOTA Tangle, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), IPFS protocols, Application Programming Interface (API), Proxy Re-encryption (PRE), and access control, which are analysed and integrated to secure patient medical records, and Internet of Things (IoT) medical devices, to develop a patient-based access management system that gives patients full control of their health records. This research developed four prototype applications to demonstrate the proposed solution: the web appointment application, the patient application, the doctor application, and the remote medical IoT device application. The results indicate that the proposed framework can improve healthcare services by providing immutable, secure, scalable, trusted, self-managed, and traceable patient health records while giving patients full control of their own medical records.
Cloud storage system provides on-demand and pay-per-use storage models with low computing costs. However, this storage system suffers from various security risks. Blockchain technology is an advanced technique that stores data in a distributed manner, and once the data are stored, it cannot be altered. Therefore, a blockchain-based distributed architecture has been proposed in this paper for the cloud storage system. The proposed scheme utilizes the functionality of the smart contract to provide security features to the stored cloud data. The proposed scheme encodes the data before uploading it to the cloud server to achieve confidentiality. Furthermore, the proposed system includes an enhanced optimization technique and a challenge-response-based integrity checking mechanism, which provides a more secure cloud environment. The proposed technique also minimizes the system bandwidth cost using an enhanced fruit fly optimization algorithm that optimizes the node failure repair process. The experimental results and performance evaluation show that the proposed scheme is secured and reliable for the cloud computing environment.
The metaverse gradually evolves into a virtual world containing a series of interconnected sub-metaverses. Diverse digital resources, including identities, contents, services, and supporting data, are key components of the sub-metaverse. Therefore, a Domain Name System (DNS)-like system is necessary for efficient management and resolution. However, the legacy DNS was designed with security vulnerabilities and trust risks due to centralized issues. Blockchain is used to mitigate these concerns due to its decentralized features. Additionally, it supports identity management as a default feature, making it a natural fit for the metaverse. While there are several DNS alternatives based on the blockchain, they either manage only a single type of identifiers or isolate identities from other sorts of identifiers, making it difficult for sub-metaverses to coexist and connect with each other. This article proposes a M ulti- I dentifier management and resolution S ystem (MIS) in the metaverse, supporting the registration, resolution, and inter-translation functions. The basic MIS is portrayed as a four-tier architecture on a consortium blockchain due to its manageability, enhanced security, and efficiency properties. On-chain data is lightweight and compressed to save on storage while accelerating reading and writing operations. The resource data is encrypted based on the attributes of the sub-metaverse in the storage tier for privacy protection and access control. For users with decentralization priorities, a modification named EMIS is built on top of Ethereum. Finally, MIS is implemented on two testbeds and is available online as the open-source system. The first testbed consists of 4 physical servers located in the UK and Malaysia while the second is made up of 200 virtual machines (VMs) spread over 26 countries across all 5 continents on Google Cloud. Experiments indicate that MIS provides efficient reading and writing performance than the legacy DNS and other public blockchain-based workarounds including EMIS and Ethereum Name Service (ENS).
Han Bao, Youjian Zhao, Xiaoping Zhang, Gaoyuan Wang · 8 authors
Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) applications have advanced rapidly. However, most of them are inherently vulnerable to security threats and may be the source of spoofing attacks, and meanwhile, in AIoT systems, the transfer of real-time data from terminals and the cloud strains network bandwidth. To defend against attacks, save network forwarding resources, and relieve authentication pressure on the receiver end, it is essential to verify the source identity of AIoT terminals on the forwarding path. In this article, we propose PDIV, a probabilistic and distributed identity validation solution for AIoT applications. In the framework of PDIV, honest forwarders can verify the authenticity of the source identity of packets with a certain probability and filter spoofed packets to prevent them from spreading, reduce end-to-end network latency, and increase throughput as much as possible. Additionally, PDIV, a blockchain-based system that uses Merkle Patricia Trie (MPT) on the blockchain, makes it practical and efficient to realize distributed storage and verification of identity information. Moreover, we theorize about the tradeoff between PDIV network performance and detection effectiveness, as well as how PDIV enables defenses against different attacks, such as spoofing and Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks. Furthermore, we implement PDIV on network simulator version 3 (NS3) and evaluate its performance. The simulation results demonstrate that PDIV can prevent the spread of spoofed packets effectively and PDIV works better than currently available blockchain-based public-key infrastructure (PKI) approaches in terms of network latency.