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.
This Article, which takes into account developments up until summer 2017, evaluates the early days of regulatory engagement with blockchain technology. My analysis unfolds in three parts. First, I provide a cursory overview of the technology itself to highlight considerable uncertainties concerning its future. Regulators asked to engage with distributed ledgers are thus compelled to regulate the unknown. Second, I will introduce a typology of regulatory strategies adopted to date and highlight their respective advantages and shortcomings. Third, I will outline a number of guiding principles regulators should follow in respect of blockchain technology. I will make the argument that despite the technology's uncertain future, early regulatory engagement is warranted as a young technology is a malleable technology. As technology develops, law has to adapt. As a consequence, I put forward a number of regulatory techniques, including a process of polycentric co-regulation that relies on the regulatory potential of (blockchain) software and the adoption of a so-called “28 th regime” at the EU level which may help navigate the uncertainties of blockchain development and regulation.
C. Kouzinopoulos, Konstantinos M. Giannoutakis, Konstantinos Votis, Dimitrios Tzovaras · 10 authors
The H2020 European research project Safe-Guarding Home IoT Environments with Personalised Real-time Risk Control (GHOST) aims to develop a cyber-security layer on IoT smart home installations. The proposed system analyses packet-level data flows for building patterns of communications between IoT devices and external entities. To ensure non-repudiation, integrity and authentication of the data captured, they are stored in a Blockchain, a distributed ledger network, as digitally-signed transactions. Since the data can potentially include sensitive user information, it is imperative to promote trust by informing users about the operating principles of the network as well as to request the acceptance of a consent form by them. This paper presents the design and implementation of a Forms of Consent application, a Distributed Application that interacts with a set of Smart Contracts deployed on a private Ethereum network. The application is being developed as part of the GHOST project.
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)
Harsh Desai, Kevin Liu, Murat Kantarcıoğlu, Lalana Kagal
As more and more data is collected for various reasons, the sharing of such data becomes paramount to increasing its value. Many applications ranging from smart cities to personalized health care require individuals and organizations to share data at an unprecedented scale. Data sharing is crucial in today's world, but due to privacy reasons, security concerns and regulation issues, the conditions under which the sharing occurs needs to be carefully specified. Currently, this process is done by lawyers and requires the costly signing of legal agreements. In many cases, these data sharing agreements are hard to track, manage or enforce. In this work, we propose a novel alternative for tracking, managing and especially adjudicating such data sharing agreements using smart contracts and blockchain technology. We design a framework that generates smart contracts from parameters based on legal data sharing agreements. The terms in these agreements are automatically adjudicating by the system. Monetary punishment can be employed using secure voting by external auditors to hold the violators accountable. Our experimental evaluation shows that our proposed framework is efficient and low-cost.
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)
Yiyun Zhou, Meng Han, Liyuan Liu, Yan Wang · 6 authors
The Internet of Things (IoT) global market is growing significantly fast in recent years, from a wearable small watch to a giant airplane. The Smart-home is one of the most popular applications which can improve the resident's life quality. However, the security and privacy issues of homeowner bring emerging challenges while more and more data are collecting and sharing by the instances of different IoT devices within the Smart-home. Confront the challenge, an emerging charming technology blockchain provides a private, secure, and decentralized mechanism for the data usage. But, there are still many challenges for the application of blockchain such as the efficiency, storage, and energy cost, etc. This paper proposes IoT architecture in Smart-home environment based on blockchain and smart contract with the comprehensive consideration of the primary challenges. Our approach exemplifies the three core components in Smart-home: smart contract, private blockchain, and public blockchain. Each Smart-home contains their unique private chain. We present the application scenarios in our architecture and discuss the principles of blockchain smart contract application for Smart-home.
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)
Existing client onboarding and Know Your Customer (KYC) processes are typically slow, expensive and often accomplished in-person. Moreover, the current identity management models in practice deprive users from having complete control over their digital identity data. Users' identity attributes are stored on multiple centralized repositories, which often follow inadequate security policies. In this paper, we take advantage of Hyperledger Indy, a public and permissioned distributed ledger technology (DLT), to develop a digital onboarding framework based on the Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) principles. With this framework we take a step towards tackling a number of weaknesses in current KYC processes and identity management models, while addressing the requirements associated with SSI, Privacy by Design and European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Blockchain-enabled e-voting (BEV) could reduce voter fraud and increase voter access. Eligible voters cast a ballot anonymously using a computer or smartphone. BEV uses an encrypted key and tamper-proof personal IDs. This article highlights some BEV implementations and the approach’s potential benefits and challenges.
Bhabendu Kumar Mohanta, Soumyashree S. Panda, Debasish Jena
In the last decade blockchain technology become mainstream research topic because of its decentralized, peer to peer transaction, distributed consensus, and anonymity properties. The blockchain technology overshadows regulatory problem and technical challenges. A smart contract is a set of programs which are self-verifying, self-executing and tamper resistant. Smart contract with the integration of blockchain technology capable of doing a task in real time with low cost and provide a greater degree of security. This paper firstly, explains the various components and working principle of smart contract. Secondly, identify and analyse the various use cases of smart contract along with the advantage of using smart contract in blockchain application. Lastly, the paper concludes with challenges lie in implementing smart contract the future real-life scenario.
Digital identity is the cornerstone of a digital economy. However, proving identity remotely is difficult to do. To complicate things further, identity is usually not a global, absolute construct, but the information shared with different parties differs, based on the relationship to the user. Therefore, a viable solution for digital identity should enable users to have full control over their personal information and share only the information that they wish to share with each service. Blockchain technology can help to realize a self-sovereign identity that puts the user in control of her information, by enabling a decentralized way to handle public key infrastructure. In the current contribution, we present the Sora identity system, which is a mobile app that utilizes blockchain technology to create a secure protocol for storing encrypted personal information, as well as sharing verifiable claims about personal information.
Blockchains and sensors installed on a vehicle could be combined to semiautomatically activate/deactivate car insurance coverage in an envisaged on-demand insurance scenario. We present a prototype that includes a mobile application (app) and a portable electronic device to be installed onboard. The mobile app lets the driver dynamically change the status of specific insurance coverage (in some cases, after pictures of the vehicle have been taken to attest to its conditions). Each modification and picture hash (a fixed-length alphanumeric summary of data content) are saved on the blockchain within a smart contract to certify changes made as well as the vehicle's status. Sensors embedded in the electronic device are used to collect passengers' and the vehicle?s data. Data are then used to automatically modify insurance coverage based on car/environment conditions and the preferences set. The proposed solution could help lower policy modification costs and limit insurance fraud.
The present work deals with the inter relationships of blockchain technology and the new European General Data Protection Regulation, that will be intact after May 28th, 2018. The regulation harmonises personal data protection across the European Union and aims to return the ownership of personal data to the individual. This thesis, therefore, addresses the question how this new technology that is characterised by decentralisation, immutability and truly digitised values will be affected by the strict privacy regulation and vice versa. The aim of this work is to clarify whether blockchains can comply with the new regulation on the one hand and to identify how blockchain could support its compliance, on the other hand. The questions are validated through an extensive literature review and are further investigated by using a Delphi study that asks a panel of 25 renowned experts to find opportunities, limitations and general suggestions about both topics. In addition, a framework is proposed to support the assessment of privacy and related risks of blockchains. As a result, it becomes apparent that blockchains can become more privacy friendly and comply with the regulation if an active dialogue between blockchain developers and regulatory authorities helps to strengthen their mutual understanding and work. With the support of this work and the blockchain Privacy Impact Assessment canvas a foundation for the necessary next steps is laid to overcome the challenges of defining a data controller or deleting personal data within a blockchain.
Joaõ Pedro Dias, Hugo Sereno Ferreira, Ângelo Martins
Access control is a crucial part of a system's security, restricting what actions users can perform on resources. Therefore, access control is a core component when dealing with e-Health data and resources, discriminating which is available for a certain party. We consider that current systems that attempt to assure the share of policies between facilities are prone to system's and network's faults and do not assure the integrity of policies lifecycle. By approaching this problem with the use of a distributed ledger, namely a consortium blockchain, where the operations are stored as transactions, we ensure that the different facilities have knowledge about all the parties that can act over the e-Health resources while maintaining integrity, auditability, authenticity, and scalability.
The blockchain technology has evolved beyond traditional payment solutions in the finance sector and offers a potential for transforming many sectors including the public sector. The novel integration of technology and economy that open public block-chains have brought represents both challenges to and opportunities for enhancing digital public services. So far, the public sector has lagged behind other sectors in both research and exploration of this technology, but pilot cases show that there is a great potential for reforming and even transforming public service delivery.
The ability of blockchain technology to record transactions on distributed ledgers offers new opportunities for governments to improve transparency, prevent fraud, and establish trust in the public sector. However, blockchain adoption and use in the context of e-Government is rather unexplored in academic literature. In this paper, we systematically review relevant research to understand the current research topics, challenges and future directions regarding blockchain adoption for e-Government. The results show that the adoption of blockchain-based applications in e-Government is still very limited and there is a lack of empirical evidence. The main challenges faced in blockchain adoption are predominantly presented as technological aspects such as security, scalability and flexibility. From an organizational point of view, the issues of acceptability and the need of new governance models are presented as the main barriers to adoption. Moreover, the lack of legal and regulatory support is identified as the main environmental barrier of adoption. Based on the challenges presented in the literature, we propose future research questions that need to be addressed to inform how the public sector should approach the blockchain technology adoption.
In the present techno-political moment it is clear that ignoring or dismissing the hype surrounding blockchain is unwise, and certainly for regulatory authorities and governments who must keep a grip on the technology and those promoting it, in order to ensure democratic accountability and regulatory legitimacy within the blockchain ecosystem and beyond. Blockchain is telling (and showing) us something very important about the evolution of capital and neoliberal economic reason, and the likely impact in the near future on forms and patterns of work, social organization, and, crucially, on communities and individuals who lack influence over the technologies and data that increasingly shape and control their lives. In this short essay I introduce some of the problems in the regulation of blockchain and offer counter-narratives aimed at cutting through the hype fuelling the ascendency of this most contemporary of technologies.
Md Zakirul Alam Bhuiyan, Aliuz Zaman, Tian Wang, Guojun Wang · 6 authors
The increase in reported incidents of security breaches that compromise privacy of individuals requires us to question the current model used to collect patient information. What we have learned from bitcoin and the underlying blockchain technology is that there are ways for us to protect this information by using a distributed ledger. In this paper, we review and propose a solution that can be used to manage individual health data as well as cross-institutional sharing of this information. The solution will increase clinical effectiveness and an increase in research when the data is shared with researchers. The proposed system solution based on blockchain technology that includes providers, hospitals and clinic, insurance companies, and patients. All along the ownership of the data would belong to the individual or the patient. In the solution, we suggest to adopt a private blockchain solution where all participants are known and trusted, which allows for privacy and security of the data.
Due to the popularity of multimedia and constantly growing capacity of network, digital media demanding is increasingly high in last decade. The digital media with copyrighted contents, such as pictures, videos, audios, and 3D-model materials, etc., are more important in today's e-commerce. In recent years, the digital media content service by using OTT (over-the-top) platform is an emerging e-commerce model. The traditional website of the digital media content (DMC) always provides the transaction platform for both content producer and content provider to upload their DMC products. Then, clients (consumers) could browse their interesting products on the website, and download DMCs after payment. However, the transaction of these copyrighted DMCs on the platform is still carried out by means of the traditional payment, e.g. credit cards, debit cards and the ACH (Automated Clearing House). This paper proposes an innovative secure private OTT (p-OTT) platform in which the transaction process could deal with the credible and customizable services by adopting blockchain technology. One of the key features of the blockchain technique is smart contract. Thus, each DMC product could be pre-defined a template of data contract. After negotiation process by using the smart contract, the real data contract (RDC) will be created and outputted by smart contract. According to the predefined template of data contract, the content producer or provider could easily implement his transaction policy. In addition, we design an online authentication key for each member and a shadow key pair for each booked DMC during a transaction period. Therefore, this paper presents a secure OTT model with blockchain technology. Finally, we shows that it is not only a secure OTT platform but also a flexible transaction via preforming smart contract.
Thanks to the growth of cloud computing and network technology, different organizations might want to share data and resources between each other. However, cross-organizational authentication systems usually need a central control system, which must be fully trusted. Thus, we use blockchain technology to store the access control list of users due to its tamper-proof and decentralized feature. Our system also provides authentication/authorization/accounting functions by using a virtual coin exe_coin to achieve accounting function. The method of one-way hash chain is used to securely adapt to the transparency feature of blockchain. In authentication system, the transparency may lead to the linkability problem. In our scheme, attackers cannot get the linkability between the transactions and the particular user. To the best of our knowledge, our scheme is the first blockchain-based authentication system with the merits of unlinkability and accounting.
Kevin Liu, Harsh Desai, Lalana Kagal, Murat Kantarcıoğlu
As more and more data is collected for various reasons, the sharing of such data becomes paramount to increasing its value. Many applications ranging from smart cities to personalized health care require individuals and organizations to share data at an unprecedented scale. Data sharing is crucial in today's world, but due to privacy reasons, security concerns and regulation issues, the conditions under which the sharing occurs needs to be carefully specified. Currently, this process is done by lawyers and requires the costly signing of legal agreements. In many cases, these data sharing agreements are hard to track, manage or enforce. In this work, we propose a novel alternative for tracking, managing and especially enforcing such data sharing agreements using smart contracts and blockchain technology. We design a framework that generates smart contracts from parameters based on legal data sharing agreements. The terms in these agreements are automatically enforced by the system. Monetary punishment can be employed using secure voting by external auditors to hold the violators accountable. Our experimental evaluation shows that our proposed framework is efficient and low-cost.
In our research we introduce “the forensic smart contract” as a punishment alternative for tiny law violations. After studied the legislation boundaries and legal power transfer example for out of court applications, we evaluated three Blockchain applications covering three various cases in smart contracting. A smart-Law-script to eliminate illegal cellphone car use, with best punishment an Irrevocable prepayment in digi-money for a car phone kit. Then a “Lawscript” resolving the double taxation problem in international tax conventions. Finally a Court launches a community sentence through a “Rehabilitation Law sentence script”. After mass adoption of our methodologies we faced an unexpected globalization peace factor in Blockchain and much wide adoption of CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency).
Since the invention of internet, identity has become a significant aspect for nearly every interaction that occurs online. In this position paper, we demonstrate and discuss current limitations of centralised Identity Management (IdM) systems by drawing from the cases of two of world’s largest biometric ID systems: India’s Unique Identification System Aadhar and China’s Social Credit system, Sesame Credit. This paper explores self-sovereign identity through innovative application from blockchain 3.0. We then identify some key characteristics of blockchain technologies to address the challenges centralised IdM services face and present opportunities for furthering HCI research around de-centralised IdM services to provoke workshop discussion.
Chris Elsden, Arthi Manohar, Jo Briggs, Mike Harding · 6 authors
Blockchain is an emerging infrastructural technology that is proposed to fundamentally transform the ways in which people transact, trust, collaborate, organize and identify themselves. In this paper, we construct a typology of emerging blockchain applications, consider the domains in which they are applied, and identify distinguishing features of this new technology. We argue that there is a unique role for the HCI community in linking the design and application of blockchain technology towards lived experience and the articulation of human values. In particular, we note how the accounting of transactions, a trust in immutable code and algorithms, and the leveraging of distributed crowds and publics around vast interoperable databases all relate to longstanding issues of importance for the field. We conclude by highlighting core conceptual and methodological challenges for HCI researchers beginning to work with blockchain and distributed ledger technologies.
A trusted electronic election system requires that all the involved information must go public, that is, it focuses not only on transparency but also privacy issues. In other words, each ballot should be counted anonymously, correctly, and efficiently. In this work, a lightweight E-voting system is proposed for voters to minimize their trust in the authority or government. We ensure the transparency of election by putting all message on the Ethereum blockchain, in the meantime, the privacy of individual voter is protected via an efficient and effective ring signature mechanism. Besides, the attractive self-tallying feature is also built in our system, which guarantees that everyone who can access the blockchain network is able to tally the result on his own, no third party is required after voting phase. More importantly, we ensure the correctness of voting results and keep the Ethereum gas cost of individual participant as low as possible, at the same time. Clearly, the pre-described characteristics make our system more suitable for large-scale election.
Smart contracts that build up on blockchain technologies are receiving great attention in new business applications and the scientific community, because they allow untrusted parties to manifest contract terms in program code and thus eliminate the need for a trusted third party. The creation process of writing well performing and secure contracts in Ethereum, which is today's most prominent smart contract platform, is a difficult task. Research on this topic has only recently started in industry and science. Based on an analysis of collected data with Grounded Theory techniques, we have elaborated several common security patterns, which we describe in detail on the basis of Solidity, the dominating programming language for Ethereum. The presented patterns describe solutions to typical security issues and can be applied by Solidity developers to mitigate typical attack scenarios.