Cloud architecture has become a valuable solution for different applications, such as big data analytics, due to its high-degree of availability, scalability and strategic value. However, there still remain challenges in managing cloud architecture, in areas such as cloud security. In this paper, we exploit software-defined networking (SDN) and blockchain technologies to secure cloud management platforms from a networking perspective. We develop a blockchain-powered SDN-enabled networking infrastructure in which the integration between blockchain-based security and autonomy management layer and multi-controller SDN networking layer is defined to enhance the integrity of the control and management messages. Furthermore, our proposed networking infrastructure also enables the autonomous bandwidth provisioning to enhance the availability of cloud architecture. In the simulation section, we evaluate the performance of our proposed blockchain-powered SDN-enabled networking infrastructure by considering different scenarios.
With recent developments in the blockchain technology, the energy industry is devoting an overwhelming interest towards it. Moreover, the future society will move towards a zero-energy internet to share energy and minimize the energy usage that contributes in producing greenhouse gas consumption. As a result, energy sharing system is undergoing a paradigm shift from centralized energy supply systems to ICT-based distributed energy supply systems. In this regards, a major challenge for the energy market case study is the presence of the energy double spending problem in Micro-Grid (MG), which threatens the security of the trading infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a mechanism that the problem of double energy spending is solved by applying off-chain Hybrid Blockchain (HB) technology to provide a secure environment where energy can be safely shared between prosumer and consumer at a closer distance, without intermediary intervention.
Security is one of the most important issues in the Internet of Things (IoT). The Mirai botnet case in September 2016 revealed a serious vulnerability in IoT devices. Researchers try to mitigate the issues using several approaches. One of them uses Blockchain for the solution. At first, the integration of the Blockchain on IoT seems promising. However, there are problems in resource consumption and latency. Several solutions emerge to make Blockchain uses low resource consumption i.e., LSB and FogBus. Unfortunately, each solution has its weaknesses. FogBus has a weakness in integrity, whereas LSB has a weakness in its availability when an attack occurs on a broker. We introduce Lightweight Multi-Fog (LMF) Blockchain Model to increase availability in the LSB model. The main idea is increasing the integrity availability by splitting location based on Broadcast Domains while using Fog Computing on each Broadcast Domain. An attack in some Broadcast Domain cannot impact transactions and process in other Broadcast Domain and each Broadcast Domain have its separate transaction and process. LMF enhances the integrity and availability of the Light Blockchain Model. However, it still requires simulations in the future to get a better understanding of LMF performance, resource consumption, and latency.
Tasnimun Faika, Taesic Kim, Justin J. Ochoa, Maleq Khan · 6 authors
Wireless battery management systems (WBMSs) are recently proposed to solve critical wiring-harness issues in conventional BMSs. It is expected that the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud/edge computing technologies are expected to advance the WBMSs by fully utilizing IoT wireless network, powerful computing and unlimited cloud support, resulting in providing significant value in cost reduction, extended scalability, and greater visibility in the lithium-ion battery energy storage systems. However, the WBMSs present a growing threat from cyber-attacks as the WBMSs are always connected on networks and a lack of cybersecurity perspective is still prevalent in BMS usage and design phase. This paper explores blockchain technology for ensuring the communication and data security of an loT-enabled WBMS from malicious cyber-attacks. The concept of the proposed blockchain-based IoT network for WBMSs is validated by experimental studies.
As one of the underlying supporting technologies of Energy Internet, energy blockchain has attracted more and more attention. How to combine energy blockchain with specific application scenarios is a difficult problem in current research. Firstly, the technical feasibility of the application of energy blockchain in the field of energy trading is analyzed in detail. Then, taking the scenario of electric vehicle charging and discharging trading as the breakthrough point, considering the convenience and security of both sides of the transaction, a blockchain system framework supporting consensus algorithm and intelligent contract is proposed, which includes blockchain layer and intelligent contract. There are four layers of architecture: extension layer, application layer and presentation layer. Finally, from the perspective of system platform development, the technical connotation and application demonstration based on ethereum architecture are introduced. The system architecture and its application effect provide technical reference for promoting the integration of energy system and information technology and improving energy efficiency.
Blockchain is the most popular security network technology in the 21stcentury and still under active research. The consensus algorithms in Blockchain plays a major role and are crucial for maintaining the integrity and security of a distributed network. In addition, there are various problems arising from the consensus algorithms adopted in the existing Blockchain network. Therefore, it is of upmost importance to develop a consensus algorithm to address these problems. In this paper, therefore, we propose an efficient consensus algorithm in a Blockchain network environment consisting of several distributed users. First, we study the process of consensus among users to add new blocks to the existing Blockchain. Second, we introduce the other conventional consensus algorithms, analyze the problems of each algorithm, and propose Rock-Scissors-Paper (RSP) algorithm to mitigate these problems. The RSP algorithm is an algorithm that achieves consensus among distributed users using three static balanced variables, Rock (R), Scissors (S), and Paper (P) to avoid attacks by malicious participants. Furthermore, the propose RSP algorithm is compared with the existing consensus algorithms to predict the performance and its effects in a distributed mobile network environment.
With the fast-growing demands for efficient and scalable content distribution, information-centric networking (ICN) can be a promising candidate for future networks. ICN promises direct retrieval of the content using its unique, persistent, and location-independent name. In ICN, all nodes work together to scale up content delivery, but security issues caused by malicious behaviors of ICN nodes cannot be avoided. To this end, in this article we develop a trust-enhanced blockchain based ICN (BICN) architecture for content delivery. In our proposed architecture, the whole process of content delivery is first traced in an implicitly trusted way by exploiting the excellent properties of the blockchain, so that the malicious ICN nodes can be located. Second, we leverage transactions to record the mapping between human-readable name and self-certifying name in BICN, which supports convenient and trusted alteration for users' requirements. Moreover, we present a case study in BICN based smart grid for energy data delivery, where we perform security analysis and conduct experiments. Numerical results show the superior performance of our proposal. Finally, we present open issues for future work.
Michelle-Christine Steiner, Jonas Kampik, Markus Küch, Christian Rehtanz · 5 authors
This paper proposes potential applications for Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) in the balancing energy market. Starting with illustrating the state of the art of DLT, analyzing the advantages and disadvantages and carrying out a comparison of the different concepts Blockchain, Tangle and Hashgraph. In addition, the structure of the process behind the balancing energy market is investigated and presented. Furthermore, the identification of potential applications for DLT in the balancing market is carried out. The basis for this is the execution and analysis of expert interviews and an analysis of publicly available documents.
Zhenzhen Li, Jiangpan Hou, Hai Wang, Chencheng Wang · 6 authors
Ethereum is a blockchain platform that can run smart contracts and implement decentralized applications over a peer-to-peer(P2P) network. As the second-largest cryptocurrency in the world, Ethereum has attracted a lot of attention from industry and academia. Researches on Ethereum and other blockchain platforms focus on application, smart contracts, and P2P networks. Most of works use the data collected by active crawling, and rarely obtained data from the passive monitoring perspective, especially in the blockchain P2P network analysis. In this work, we propose a passive method using traffic association and machine learning to conduct online Ethereum node detection in NetFlow data, and monitor the Ethereum nodes in NetFlow traffic to gather nodes connection dataset. Based on the dataset, multi-dimensional measurement and analysis is made in order to reveal the true performance of Ethereum network.
Over the last decade, blockchain technology has emerged to provide solutions to the complexity and privacy challenges of using distributed databases. It reduces cost for customers by eliminating intermediaries and builds trust in peer-to-peer communications. Over this time, the concept of blockchain has shifted greatly due to its potential in business growth for enterprises and the rapidly evolving applications in a collaborative smart-city ecosystem, healthcare, and governance. Many platforms, with different architectures and consensus protocols, have been introduced. Consequently, it becomes challenging for an application developer to choose the right platform. Furthermore, blockchain has misaligned with the goals for an efficient green collaborative digital ecosystem. Therefore, it becomes critical to address this gap and to build new frameworks to align blockchain with those goals. In this paper, we discuss the evolution of blockchain architecture and consensus protocols, bringing a retrospective analysis and discussing the rationale of the evolution of the various architectures and protocols, as well as capturing the assumptions conducive to their development and contributions to building collaborative applications. We introduce a classification of those architectures helping developers to choose a suitable platform for applications and providing insights for future research directions in the field to build new frameworks.
A. Pinar Ozisik, Gavin Andresen, Brian Neil Levine, Darren Tapp · 6 authors
We introduce Graphene, a method and protocol for interactive set reconciliation among peers in blockchains and related distributed systems. Through the novel combination of a Bloom filter and an Invertible Bloom Lookup Table (IBLT), Graphene uses a fraction of the network bandwidth used by deployed work for one- and two-way synchronization. We show that, for this specific problem, Graphene is more efficient at reconciling n items than using a Bloom filter at the information theoretic bound. We contribute a fast and implementation-independent algorithm for parameterizing an IBLT so that it is optimally small in size and meets a desired decode rate with arbitrarily high probability. We characterize our performance improvements through analysis, detailed simulation, and deployment results for Bitcoin Cash, a prominent cryptocurrency. Our implementations of Graphene, IBLTs, and our IBLT optimization algorithm are all open-source code.
The application of blockchain technology to the energy sector promises to derive new operating models focused on local generation and sustainable practices, which are driven by peer-to-peer collaboration and community engagement. However, real-world energy blockchains differ from typical blockchain networks insofar as they must interoperate with grid infrastructure, adhere to energy regulations, and embody engineering principles. Naturally, these additional dimensions make real-world energy blockchains highly dependent on the participation of grid operators, engineers, and energy providers. Although much theoretical and proof-of-concept research has been published on energy blockchains, this research aims to establish a lens on real-world projects and implementations that may inform the alignment of academic and industry research agendas. This research classifies 131 real-world energy blockchain initiatives to develop an understanding of how blockchains are being applied to the energy domain, what type of failure rates can be observed from recently reported initiatives, and what level of technical and theoretical details are reported for real-world deployments. The results presented from the systematic analysis highlight that real-world energy blockchains are (a) growing exponentially year-on-year, (b) producing relatively low failure/drop-off rates (~7% since 2015), and (c) demonstrating information sharing protocols that produce content with insufficient technical and theoretical depth.
With features such as decentralization, consistency, tamper resistance, non-repudiation, and pseudonym, blockchain technology has the potential to strengthen the Internet of Things (IoT) significantly, thus opening an intriguing research area in the integration of blockchain and IoT. However, most existing blockchain schemes were not dedicated to the IoT ecosystem and hence could not meet the specific requirements of IoT. This paper aims to fix the gap. Inspired by Chainspace, a blockchain platform which could be applicable in IoT, VChain is proposed, a novel blockchain scheme suitable for IoT which is more secure, concrete, and practical compared with Chainspace. Specifically, in VChain, a two-layer BFT-based consensus protocol with HoneyBadger BFT protocol is proposed and a collective signature scheme as building blocks. The designs above allow for supporting faulty-shards-tolerance and asynchronous network model, which could not be sustained in Chainspace, and keeping high efficiency as well. Moreover, the sharding strategy presented in VChain, different from that in RapidChain, which adopts the energy-consuming PoW mechanism for sharding, is environmentfriendly and thus makes VChain fit for IoT well. Last but not least, VChain also inherits the merits of Chainspace to separate the execution and verification of smart contracts for privacy.
Efficient and secure resource discovery in the inter-cloud remains non-trivial, especially in non-federated environments. It involves balancing conflicting requirements in a dynamic multi-party scenario based on multi-factor optimization while overcoming security concerns. Various P2P based resource discovery schemes for the inter-cloud environment have been proposed by researchers but challenges including efficient resource discovery and selection, trust/reputation management, transaction record management and seamless financial settlements persist. We propose a Blockchain-based Inter-cloud Resource Discovery (BIRD) framework for the non-federated inter-cloud model which addresses the shortcomings of existing approaches. It is the first demonstration of using the blockchain idea to the inter-cloud resource discovery process alleviating the need of a trusted third-party or broker between participating cloud service providers (CSPs), while ensuring optimal and secure resource discovery and selection.
Arian Balouchestani, Mojtaba Mahdavi, Yeganeh Hallaj, Delaram Javdani
Millions of news are being exchanged daily among people. With the appearance of the Internet, the way of broadcasting news has changed and become faster, however it caused many problems. For instance, the increase in the speed of broadcasting news leads to an increase in the speed of fake news creation. Fake news can have a huge impression on societies. Additionally, the existence of a central entity, such as news agencies, could lead to fraud in the news broadcasting process, e.g. generating fake news and publishing them for their benefits. Since Blockchain technology provides a reliable decentralized network, it can be used to publish news. In addition, Blockchain with the help of decentralized applications and smart contracts can provide a platform in which fake news can be detected through public participation. In this paper, we proposed a new method for sharing and analyzing news to detect fake news using Blockchain, called SANUB. SANUB provides features such as publishing news anonymously, news evaluation, reporter validation, fake news detection and proof of news ownership. The results of our analysis show that SANUB outperformed the existing methods.
Aug 1, 2019·2019 18th IEEE International Conference On Trust, Security And Privacy In Computing And Communications/13th IEEE International Conference On Big Data Science And Engineering (TrustCom/BigDataSE)
With the rapid advance of electric vehicles (EVs) and the sparse public charging infrastructure, the private charging pile sharing networks (PCPSNs) hold the potential to improve the quality of experience (QoE) of using EVs by leveraging private charging piles (PCPs) as shared charging points to charge a group of distributed EVs. However, due to the potential security and privacy issues for EVs and PCPs caused by untrusted participants in decentralized energy market, it becomes a crucial challenge to optimally schedule the charging and sharing strategies of EVs and PCPs in PCPSNs. In this paper, we propose a secure and permissioned blockchain-based PCP sharing scheme for EVs in PCPSNs. Firstly, we present an energy blockchain-based PCPSN framework to enhance the security of distributed energy trading. Secondly, we develop a reputation-based secure PCP sharing protocol to efficiently reach consensus in the blockchain with the implement of BLS multi-signature. Thirdly, we investigate a distributed reputation model to evaluate the trustworthiness of participants and identify malicious users. In addition, based on the many-to-one matching game, the optimal strategies of EVs and PCPs are analyzed by searching the stable matching pairs. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed scheme can not only improve the QoE of users, but also protect the network from adversaries.
Today, the new knowledge, works, data and archives are growing day by day and circulating rapidly. At the same time, people's demands for knowledge and information are increasingly diversified, showing such characteristics as personalization, internationalization, cross-time-space and intelligent integration. Traditional libraries, whether paper or digital, cannot adapt to them. In this paper, we propose a framework for establishing virtual digital library based on P2P and blockchain, called Peer Book Search and Library, or PBSL for short. In PBSL: Firstly, books and all kinds of materials are stored digitally on, peers, i.e., personal computers and other digital devices distributed around the world. Secondly, the search, distribution and transmission of various digital resources are based on DHT, peer search, peer transfer and other P2P technologies. Thirdly, blockchain technology is used in digital copyright protection, trade, propagation link maintenance, reading charge and so on. By integrating all above aspects creatively and systematically in software, a PBSL library will completely overcome the disadvantages of the existing library system, and become a brand new as well as subversive way for knowledge production, distribution, acquisition and consumption.
Raja Majid Ali Ujjan, Zeeshan Pervez, Keshav Dahal
Due to the rapid increment of the cyber attacks, intrusion detection system (IDS) is shifting towards collaborative approaches. There is a huge demand for securing larger networking environments for providing a safeguard against threats. In order to optimize the feasible detection performance, Collaborative Intrusion Detection Networks (CIDN) approaches have been adopted in practical scenarios, which enables a group of IDS nodes to mutually share and exchange mandatory information with each other, for example, IDS-signatures, attacks alarms. However, CIDN networks are distributed in nature, such networks still face plenty of implementation problems, especially, insider intruder can easily dominate any of security node and leave the entire security system vulnerable. To achieve the trust-based communication between each of IDS node, the recent advancement in blockchain applications is considered as a good fit to create trust-based communication in CIDN networks. This work converges CIDN network and blockchain in SDN context. Firstly, we investigated existing related work and highlighted challenges and research gap towards blockchain in CIDN networks. Secondly, we utilised three collaborated Snort IDS to receive the latest signature update from Ryu and then to securely share such signatures updates to all other Snort nodes within test-bed. Our work is motivated to detect seven types of common attacks with collaborated signature-based IDS, which feasibly processes more packets to achieve satisfactory detection results. Overall the evaluation results show that with the adoption of blockchain protocols, the proposed CIDN network achieves 96% of TP rate detection rate for TCP, UDP and ICMP packets.
Bitcoin mining is the process of generating new blocks in Bitcoin blockchain. This process is vulnerable to different types of attacks. One of the most famous attacks in this category is Selfish Mining, introduced by Eyal and Sirer [1] in 2014. This attack is essentially a strategy that a sufficiently powerful mining pool can follow to obtain more revenue than its fair share. This is a tempting attack to deploy because every pool is trying to increase its revenue and this is an excellent opportunity. However, in most of the works to date, the effect of only one selfish pool has been studied. This is an attempt to analyze selfish mining in a competitive environment, where there are more than one selfish miners in play. To do so, we created a Bitcoin network simulator and used it to simulate different configurations of miners to be able to address this problem. In short, our finding shows that in almost all of the configurations, with the presence of a more powerful selfish miner, selfish mining actually decreases the revenue of the weaker selfish miners and also helps the stronger selfish miner.
As the monetary value of cryptocurrency increases, the security measures for cryptocurrency becomes more important. A limitation of the existing cryptocurrency exchanges is their vulnerability to threats of hacking due to their centralized manner of management. In order to overcome such limitation, blockchain technology is increasingly adopted. The blockchain technology enables decentralization and Peer-to-Peer(P2P) transactions, in which blocks of information are linked in chain topology, and each node participating in the blockchain shares a distributed ledger. In this paper, we propose and implement a mobile electronic wallet that can safely store, send and receive cryptocurrencies. The proposed mobile cryptocurrency wallet connects to the network only when the wallet actively is used. Wallet owner manages his or her private key offline, which is advantageous in terms of security. JavaScript based wallet apps were implemented to respectively run on Android and iOS mobile phones. I demonstrate the process of transferring Ethereum cryptocurrency from an account to another account through Ropsten, a test net for Ethereum. Hardware wallets, such as Ledger Nano S, provide a slightly higher level of security, yet have the disadvantages of added burden of carrying additional physical devices and high costs (about 80$).
This paper focuses on how to use consortium blockchain to improve the regulation of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending market. The partial decentralized consortium blockchain with limited pre-set nodes can well improve transparency and security, which is suitable for financial regulation. Considering irregularities of the P2P lending market, the Hyper-ledger-based Peer-to-Peer Lending System (HyperP2PLS) is proposed. First elaborate the application scenario and business logic of the system, where a national P2P Lending Trading Center will be established to integrate all transactions and information of P2P lending market. Then construct the system architecture consisting of the blockchain network, HTTP server, and applications. The algorithm of implementation process and the web application for users have been well illustrated. The performance analysis shows that HyperP2PLS can guarantee the reliability, safety, transparency and efficiency.
Aug 1, 2019·2019 18th IEEE International Conference On Trust, Security And Privacy In Computing And Communications/13th IEEE International Conference On Big Data Science And Engineering (TrustCom/BigDataSE)
Blockchain has been considered as the enabler to provide automated and trust-less Internet of things (IoT) services. However, legacy consensus mechanisms applied in most of the blockchain networks pose obstacles for deployment in IoT in respect of decentralization and scalability. The emerging Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-based models aim at delivering the benefits of blockchain without making compromise on performance. This paper gives a critical analysis on the two representative DAG-based models, IOTA and Hashgraph. In particular, we provide an insightful overview of the two blockchains, with their features and functionalities. We define desired criteria for evaluating these two blockchains, provide an in-depth analysis on the two systems, and identify open challenges IOTA and Hashgraph are facing for their application in IoT.
Distributed ledgers based on blockchain, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, are known and used worldwide now. But the existing distributed ledgers are too slow for commercial requirements when compared with centralized systems like Visa. To tackle this issue, many strategies have been put forward, including GHOST, Bitcoin-NG, Sharding, State channel, Plasma, etc. But few of them is focused on the P2P layer, while the P2P layer plays a crucial role as a distributed ledger needs to be updated via block propagation process. We propose an alternative protocol named Ari, which is a P2P optimization for blockchain systems. Ari protocol makes the block propagation graph an intercrossing net rather than a unidirectional tree, thus leading to a great reduction on latency as well as a great expansion on throughput, and the security as well as scalability is still guaranteed.