Dennis Przytarski, Christoph Stach, Clémentine Gritti, Bernhard Mitschang
When, in 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned the first distributed database management system that relied on cryptographically secured chain of blocks to store data in an immutable and tamper-resistant manner, his primary use case was the introduction of a digital currency. Owing to this use case, the blockchain system was geared towards efficient storage of data, whereas the processing of complex queries, such as provenance analyses of data history, is out of focus. The increasing use of Internet of Things technologies and the resulting digitization in many domains, however, have led to a plethora of novel use cases for a secure digital ledger. For instance, in the healthcare sector, blockchain systems are used for the secure storage and sharing of electronic health records, while the food industry applies such systems to enable a reliable food-chain traceability, e.g., to prove compliance with cold chains. In these application domains, however, querying the current state is not sufficient—comprehensive history queries are required instead. Due to these altered usage modes involving more complex query types, it is questionable whether today’s blockchain systems are prepared for this type of usage and whether such queries can be processed efficiently by them. In our paper, we therefore investigate novel use cases for blockchain systems and elicit their requirements towards a data store in terms of query capabilities. We reflect the state of the art in terms of query support in blockchain systems and assess whether it is capable of meeting the requirements of such more sophisticated use cases. As a result, we identify future research challenges with regard to query processing in blockchain systems.
Open learning is now facing a complex higher education ecosystem that involves a variety of heterogeneous information systems and comprises decentralized stakeholders, such as universities, professors, students, and software vendors. Authentic, non-repudiable, and fast available data sharing among open learning information systems and stakeholders is a key issue that remains unresolved. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a consortium blockchain extended architecture featuring integration and cross-chain functions to provide a unified and trusted data-sharing infrastructure for open learning. The overall architecture consists of three elements: a blockchain-integrated open learning scenario schema; a blockchain-integrated open learning application model; and a pragmatic blockchain integration framework. The proposed blockchain integration framework is implemented based on Hyperledger Fabric 1.4. A trusted open-learning behavior and achievement management application is developed as a proof-of-concept which integrates two educational institutions’ four productional learning systems into a blockchain network and has stably run over six months. A suite of experiments is designed and executed to verify our blockchain system’s viability and scalability. The test result shows the implementation of the blockchain system is competent for the production environment and outperforms related works investigated. However, it does have limitations and optimization potential, which will be studied in the future.
Sahaya Ashwini, Annapurna P Patil, Savita K. Shetty
Over the last few years, the world has been moving towards digital healthcare, where harnessing medical data distributed across multiple healthcare providers is essential to achieving personalized treatments. Though the efficiency and speed of the diagnosis process have increased due to the digitalization of healthcare data, it is at constant risk of cyberattacks. Medical images, in particular, seem to have become a regular victim of hackers, due to which there is a need to find a feasible solution for storing them securely. This work proposes a blockchain-based framework that leverages the InterPlanetary File system (IPFS) to provide decentralized storage for medical images. Our proposed blockchain storage model is implemented in the IPFS distributed file-sharing system, where each image is stored on IPFS, and its corresponding unique content-addressed hash is stored in the blockchain. The proposed model ensures the security of the medical images without any third-party dependency and eliminates the obstacles that arise due to centralized storage.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Cloud Data Security Solutions
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
This paper focuses on the application of blockchain technology in the copyright field. This distributed digital ledger technology offers a platform to record information. Blockchain technology has the potential to take over the current Digital Risk Management System (DRMS) and improve the current situation. However, the technology has its limitations and may bring future challenges in the industry.
Hien Do Hoang, Do Thi Thu Hien, Thach Canh Nhut, Phan Dang Truc Quyen · 6 authors
The demand for personal healthcare record (PHR) exchange among electronic medical record (EMR) systems and patients is growing along with remarkable efforts to improve the quality, safety, privacy-preserving, and efficiency of healthcare information delivery. Currently, in EMR systems, there are problems of fragmented communication and lack of interoperability for health care professionals, hospitals, clinics and patients to appropriately access and securely share a patient’s EMR. Moreover, in the context of the recent soaring of security breaches and surveillance in incidents reported, a solution to ensure the safety and privacy of data is essential. Blockchain can ensure trust, security, and privacy of individual data in the digital world. By leveraging blockchain features, we propose HoloCare system for providing a single source from the patient’s PHR for authentication, permission granting and remote access to the health information data from other EMR systems. To demonstrate the practicability and effectiveness of HoloCare, we utilize HL7 FHIR, known as a standard for healthcare data exchange in a wide variety of contexts from PHR-based data sharing, server communication among and within healthcare providers.
The concept of blockchain was introduced as the Bitcoin cryptocurrency in a 2008 whitepaper by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. Blockchain has applications in many domains, such as healthcare, the Internet of Things (IoT), and data management. Data management is defined as obtaining, processing, safeguarding, and storing information about an organization to aid with making better business decisions for the firm. The collected information is often shared across organizations without the consent of the individuals who provided the information. As a result, the information must be protected from unauthorized access or exploitation. Therefore, organizations must ensure that their systems are transparent to build user confidence. This paper introduces the architectural design and development of a blockchain-based system for private data management, discusses the proof-of-concept prototype using Hyperledger Fabric, and presents evaluation results of the proposed system using Hyperledger Caliper. The proposed solution can be used in any application domain where managing the privacy of user data is important, such as in health care systems.
Muhammad Zilal Hamzah, Diyanatul Husna, F. Astha Ekadiyanto, I Ketut Eddy Purnama · 10 authors
To fulfill health as basic human needs, health care services technology is always improved but also must maintain security and privacy of the data due to huge amount of data is created and distributed. Telemedicine with telecommunication technology offers convenience and cheaper cost, but still is vulnerable to cyber attacks, making it a threat for patients’ data's privacy. One approach that can be used to secure the data is applying access control to the data. Immutable blockchain can helps to enforce access control so it cannot be violated. We propose a system which implements Ethereum for the blockchain and React web application for the interface of the system. Data management and the access control are provided through Ethereum smart contracts, and the access control requires different role-based permission to upload and access the patients’ data. The system works successfully with average time taken to verify the role is 1.8033 seconds per session. The privacy of the patients’ data is ensured because only the patients that are allowed to keep the ID of their own data.
Ananda Rizky Duto Pamungkas, Diyanatul Husna, F. Astha Ekadiyanto, I Ketut Eddy Purnama · 10 authors
In this study, a higher level of security was implemented by using InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) based peer-to-peer data storage on an Ethereum blockchain. IPFS is used as an image data storage medium that generates an IPFS hash, or known as content identifier (CID). The CID is used to access image data on the IPFS, which can be done with the help of an IPFS gateway. The CID is sent into the blockchain using a smart contract. The results of the study demonstrates that the use of IPFS as additional security on a blockchain system can be done. The size of file sent using IPFS proportionally affects the time it takes for IPFS to store the file. The larger the file size, the more time it will take. For each additional 1 MB file, there is an approximately 5% increase in access time. The distance from the IPFS gateway will also affect file access times in which, the farther the IPFS gateway, the more time it takes. If the IPFS gateway is at a distance of 1,000 km, there will be a decrease in access time of about 5%. The distance between the IPFS gateway and the accessor also affects success with accessing data. For the most distant gateway, i.e. the United States, there was even an access failure of 24%.
The recent growth in popularity of blockchains has been primarily fueled by their support of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts. However, a blockchain is primarily a distributed, trustworthy ledger and one of its greatest features is its ability to preserve data in a robust and verifiable manner. In this paper we present a general Blockchain-of-Custody Application proof-of-concept. BoCA allows data to be preserved on the blockchain in a transparent and verifiable way. We present our application and discuss the advantages this approach has over the state-of-the-art, as well as discuss different scenarios in which it could be used.
Mohammad Hammoudeh, Bamidele Adebisi, Devrim Ünal, Abdelkader Laouid
This paper presents a blockchain extension of the run-time Sensing as a Service SOA (3SOA) approach presented in [5]. 3SOA defines a practical approach for implementing service-oriented Internet of Things (IoT) using coordination languages to integrate and program individual IoT objects to compose into full IoT system. We believe that the modularity, reuse, interoperability and portability of this model has much to offer, but that there exist some challenges in overcoming the performance issues inherent in the approach, and extending the range of applications to which it is suited. We are particularly interested in applying the coordination languages to decentralized systems. To this end, blockchain smart contracts are proposed to offer a decentralized trustable method to automatically verify compliance with pre-defined conditions before executing a transaction involving multiple parties. To validate our proposal, we demonstrate a healthcare functional prototypes as a proof of concept.
Online file management systems enable cooperatively editing and sharing. However, due to the cost of communication and storage infrastructures, traditional online file management services, e.g., Google Drive and OneDrive, usually provide limited storage space and relatively low download speed for free users. To achieve better performance, ordinary users have to purchase their expensive services. Moreover, these file management systems are based on centralized architecture and bear the privacy leakage risk, because users’ personal files are stored and controlled by their servers. To address the above problems, we propose a peer-to-peer (P2P) file management system based on IPFS and Hyperledger Fabric, named as FileWallet, which can serve as a personal wallet for individual users or organizations to store and share their files in a secure manner. In FileWallet, the users form a P2P network and a Fabric network, where P2P network builds the connections and distributed storage network and the Fabric network sustains consistent blockchain ledgers to record file operation related transactions. In our FileWallet, the storage and communication costs are mitigated in the decentralized design, and the file owner can fully control the access permission of the file to preserve the file privacy. The design of the system architecture, main functionalities, and system implementations are presented in this paper. The performance of the system is evaluated through experiments, and the experimental results show its wide applicability and scalability.
Blockchain systems face two emergent problems, namely scalability and privacy, each of which has been addressed independently. However, how to achieve privacy and scalability simultaneously remains a challenging problem for blockchains. In this article, we propose a privacy-preserving and scalable permissioned blockchain system called HyperMaze employing the zero knowledge proof technique and a hierarchical system architecture. It gains scalability by adopting a hierarchy of multiple blockchains that processes transactions in parallel. We design anID-based dual-balance account modelwhere an identity-based account is associated with two types of balances–a plaintext balance and a private (zero-knowledge) balance. Furthermore, we design a two-phase cross-chain transaction mechanism (2PXT) to achieve transaction privacy for both intra-chain and cross-chain transactions. We rigorously formulate a security model for HyperMaze under the universal composability framework, and then provide a simulation-based security proof. A prototype of HyperMaze is implemented and a series of experiments are conducted over up to 2,600 nodes to evaluate its performance. The experimental results show that a 4-level, (7,10)-threshold, 6-ary HyperMaze system can reach 19,440 TPS and the transaction confirmation latency is only 9.5 seconds. To our best knowledge, HyperMaze is the first high-throughput privacy-preserving blockchain whose throughput is over 19,000 TPS.
Luca Spalazzi, Francesco Spegni, Alessandra Corneli, Berardo Naticchia
Abstract BPMN choreography is a modeling language capable to describe scenarios where several independent participants have to collaborate in a climate of opposing interests and therefore are forced to trust each other. For this reason, in many contexts, a strong need for transparency, responsibility, and choreography compliance arise by the various participants. Blockchains and smart contracts, thanks to their characteristic of providing a decentralized and consensus‐based validation mechanism, seem to be able to meet these needs in an untrusted scenario. Nevertheless, most of the related work focused either on transparency, accountability, or compliance, but none on all three of them. Furthermore, such works do not take into account the nondeterministc nature of choreographies. This work aims at using blockchains and smart contracts in this scenario providing a formally well‐defined set of tools to match all three the aforementioned requirements. This work applies the proposed techniques to a case study from the construction industry, an economical relevant application domain where the demand for transparency, accountability, and compliance with procurement contracts (that can be modeled as choreographies) is very strong.
Data are the most important assets in all kinds of industries, as every organization is moving to cloud storage but still data security is a challenging one in many fields. One of the most important fields is Healthcare because it handles with most sensitive information. Since the data in healthcare includes patient's medical information, prescriptions, their medical insurance, etc. Due to the sensitive nature of the information stored within the EHRs(Electronic Health Records) data security is very essential. Blockchain is a technology that is developed based on two major mathematical concepts such as hashes and cryptography. Blockchain stores data as an immutable ledger that is duplicated and shared throughout all networks in a delegation from a central authority. In this paper, we provide how data can securely be stored and accessed in healthcare. Since one node blockchain is often used for worldwide electronic health records (EHR) it will store and manage patient data in a very verifiable manner & blockchain can be in public gettable in real time by anyone within the aid service supplier chain. This paper aims to discuss the issues in the existing systems and solutions to the challenges of using blockchain technology.
In this contribution, we present a simulator for the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain Network. The purpose of this tool is to run various simulations to verify hypotheses and attack scenarios without the need to actually stake cryptocurrency and fulfilling validator's obligations inside the network. Because its codebase is derived from the official specification, functionality such as the fork choice rule and finality mechanisms are guaran-teed to match the behavior of conforming client implementations. Basic metrics about the live Beacon Chain network were collected and used as an input to the conducted simulations and to verify the obtained simulation results. We find that the results of conducted simulations show great correspondence to the behavior of the live Beacon Chain. We further implement various kinds of misbehavior to verify that misbehaving validators are slashed and deprived of their invested capital. Finally, two attacks are implemented to demonstrate how the simulator can be used to verify and test the applicability of various attack scenarios.
Dec 2, 2021·2021 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Technology, Engineering, Management for Societal impact using Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Talent (TEMSMET)
Offline digital payment systems are currently limited in their scope. Extending them using new technologies like blockchain can expand the offline payment landscape and create new directions for payment systems. This paper proposes XipCOIN as a construction of such a system, based on the Ethereum blockchain. It exploits the recently defined Layer 2 Rollups model of significantly increasing performance and creating desirable transaction characteristics by moving the transactions off the primary Layer 1 blockchain. XipCOIN builds on the approach, established in previous studies by Dmitrienko et al. and Takahashi et al., of using a Trusted Execution Environment to validate the transaction offline by the payee with the payer trusting the payee signature on the confirmation.
Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) have garnered much attention recently. They have witnessed applicability in anonymizing tokens (e.g., Tornado Cash) and increasing transaction throughput (e.g., ZK-Rollups) for blockchains backing cryptocurrencies. ZKPs are touted to offer great potential for future blockchain applications that operate in a priori trustless environments across administrative boundaries. This short note discusses the integration of the ZK-STARK-based proof system into the OpenLibra blockchain. We generically describe the interaction of the involved ZKP capabilities with OpenLibra and showcase an open-sourced proof-of-concept implementation.
Blockchain technology has now spread like wildfire across the internet. Blockchain has emerged as a game-changing technology for complex industrial processes as a result of its openness, availability, and security. In this study, we used a hybrid adaptive crypto cloud framework that combines blockchain technology with multiple authorities and a botnet framework to improve cloud security while reducing computation time. The proposed adaptive crypto cloud system divides the cloud security framework into stages to organize secure data communication and reduce communication latency while detecting internal and external threats. In order to compute authentication using hash mapping and deploy an authentication system to safeguard the various users' authentication information, the whole system placed a major emphasis on block chain technology. The technology not only improves security but also makes the role-based access control system and anonymous authentication system more user-friendly.
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Cloud Data Security Solutions
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Justin S. Gazsi, Sajia Zafreen, Gaby G. Dagher, Min Long
Data sharing is as vital as data storage. Existing centralized data sharing and access systems provide less transparency and traceability as the users have to trust a centralized authority and its decision making for the entire system. There is a need for decentralized distributed data storage and access without a central authority. Blockchain provides promising solutions to such needs. However, the existing decentralized blockchain-based solutions are complex and involve financial incentives, which limits their applications. We propose a secure permissioned blockchain-based decentralized system, VAULT, with a novel quorum-based consensus. We store encrypted files using Interplanetary File System (IPFS) and the references to the files in the blockchain. VAULT is designed for applications involving collaboration from multiple permissioned parties, and users can store, access, and share data as well as manage projects through blockchain. Our experimental results show that our quorum selection is fair, and the VAULT protocol is scalable.
Electronic evidence is the electronic data generated based on electronic technology and stored in digital form. Aiming at the problems of data authenticity and integrity in the traditional storage methods of electronic evidence, and the existing blockchain storage schemes fail to give good consideration to the storage cost and efficiency. This paper proposes a model for electronic evidence storage, which uses directed acyclic graph to optimize the efficiency of on-chain storage of electronic evidence. Experimental results show that the proposed model is effective and practical.
Justification of authenticity of academic credentials is a very clumsy task from a global perspective. For digital certificates to be widely accepted requires secure verifications of the issuer, credential holders, and secure data sharing. Physical verification and a traditional centralized digital system are entirely viable for the current era. This paper proposes ACC, a blockchain-based Academic Credentials Chain(ACC), for global authenticity verifications and sharing. The proposed system recognizes from a credential who is certifying whom. In the proposed Blockchain network, a decentralized application allows users to store their credentials data privately. The evaluation results in proof of the feasibility, security and exhibits the level of performance.
Jinlei Sun, Song Huang, Changyou Zheng, Meijuan Wang · 6 authors
ERC20 is the first token standard on Ethereum and is widely used in ICOs, voting, and various asset representations. However, some methods defined in ERC20 imply potential vulnerabilities and Multiple Withdrawal Attack is one of them. Attackers can transfer more tokens than the actual allowance through this vulnerability. The current prevention methods for Multiple Withdrawal Attack include changing the transaction process, modifying the API of ERC20, and modifying the implementation of functions, etc. However, these methods have disadvantages such as poor compatibility, incomplete resolution, and high gas consumption. In this paper, we describe the process of Multiple Withdrawal Attack and analyze the shortcomings of the existing methods, and then propose a solution with lower gas consumption. In our method, a variable is added to record the allowance in the approval function to prevent tokens from being transferred repeatedly. Finally, the effectiveness and the performance of the proposed method is analyzed. The result shows that the method proposed in this paper is safe and has lower gas consumption than the existing methods.
Securing and issuing academic transcripts is one of the most mind-numbing tasks in the modern world as there are multiple disciplines and manually maintaining the accuracy of the data is tough. Moreover, the data is stored in an untrusted centralized cloud storage system, this type of model possesses a number of issues like high operational cost, data availability, and data security. The current research paper tries to exploit the decentralization and the smart contract feature of the ethereum blockchain. A model where basic student data is stored in a smart contract and large files are stored in IPFS protocol.
Abstract In the process of multi-cloud storage data migration, data integrity is vulnerable to corruption, but the existing data integrity verification schemes for data migration across clouds are not highly reliable. To address this problem, a blockchain-based data integrity verification scheme for migration across clouds is proposed in this paper. In this scheme, a blockchain network is used instead of a third-party auditor. For each migration, a multi-cloud broker will send an integrity verification request to blockchain at three different times, and a smart contract will verify the data integrity according to the RSA-based homomorphic verification tags. Then, the security of the scheme is analyzed. Finally, simulation experiments and tests are conducted on Ethereum, and the results show the feasibility of the scheme.