Bilinear pairing is a fundamental operation that is widely used in cryptographic algorithms (e.g., identity-based cryptographic algorithms) to secure IoT applications. Nonetheless, the time complexity of bilinear pairing is$O(n^{3})$, making it a very time-consuming operation, especially for resource-constrained IoT devices. Secure outsourcing of bilinear pairing has been studied in recent years to enable computationally weak devices to securely outsource the bilinear pairing to untrustworthy cloud servers. However, the state-of-art algorithms often require to precompute and store some values, which results in storage burden for devices. In the Internet of Things, devices are generally with very limited storage capacity. Thus, the existing algorithms do not fit the IoT well. In this article, we propose a secure outsourcing algorithm of bilinear pairings, which does not require precomputations. In the proposed algorithm, the outsourcer side’s efficiency is significantly improved compared with executing the original bilinear pairing operation. At the same time, the privacy of the input and output is ensured. Also, we apply the Ethereum blockchain in our outsourcing algorithm to enable fair payments, which ensures that the cloud server gets paid only when he correctly accomplished the outsourced work. The theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is efficient and secure.
Junho Jeong, Donghyo Kim, Sun-Young Ihm, Yangsun Lee · 5 authors
Korean education-related evaluation agencies utilize a centralized system that directly manages learner data. This leaves the intellectual property of the organizations and the personal information of the students vulnerable to leakage should the central server be attacked. In this study, the researchers propose a multilateral personal portfolio authentication system that guarantees the reliability, integrity, and transparency of the data such as learner's schooling history. The system uses the features of blockchain in a distributed network wherein a learner submits schooling data to a peer in the network. The data is then verified through an agreement among the peers and recorded in a chronologically encrypted ledger. The proposed system is implemented based on Hyperledger Fabric and the analysis thereof conducted by evaluating its processing speed, capacity, and security. The analysis indicates that the system is able to successfully intercept the transactions of unvalidated users, thereby preventing the recording of incorrect data by an unauthorized user. Furthermore, it provides a record of previously made changes to a learner's profile, thus improving the integrity and reliability of the data. This system provides a platform to share learner information safely and promptly among schools, certification authorities, and higher learning institutions.
The industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) supports recent developments in data management and information services, as well as services for smart factories. Nowadays, many mature IIoT cloud platforms are available to serve smart factories. However, due to the semicredibility nature of the IIoT cloud platforms, how to achieve secure storage, access control, information update and deletion for smart factory data, as well as the tracking and revocation of malicious users has become an urgent problem. To solve these problems, in this article, a blockchain-enhanced security access control scheme that supports traceability and revocability has been proposed in IIoT for smart factories. The blockchain first performs unified identity authentication, and stores all public keys, user attribute sets, and revocation list. The system administrator then generates system parameters and issues private keys to users. The domain administrator is responsible for formulating domain security and privacy-protection policies, and performing encryption operations. If the attributes meet the access policies and the user's ID is not in the revocation list, they can obtain the intermediate decryption parameters from the edge/cloud servers. Malicious users can be tracked and revoked during all stages if needed, which ensures the system security under the Decisional Bilinear Diffie-Hellman (DBDH) assumption and can resist multiple attacks. The evaluation has shown that the size of the public/private keys is smaller compared to other schemes, and the overhead time is less for public key generation, data encryption, and data decryption stages.
The term “digital signature” refers to electronic information that is used to identify signatories and indicate that they have signed a document; such information is either attached to or logically combined with a specific electronic document. However, digital signatures entail privacy infringements because it is possible to verify such signatures only when all the data are disclosed to the verifier. Zero-knowledge proofs are considered to be capable of solving this privacy problem. In general, a zero-knowledge proof can be established even if the prover hides the information required in the verification process from the verifier. Zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge (ZK-SNARK), a prevalent zero-knowledge proof, has been optimized to generate non-interactive and succinct proofs; nevertheless, the generation of proofs is excessively time consuming, making the application of ZK-SNARK impractical in most scenarios. In this paper, we show that existing cryptographic algorithms, such as a one-way hash function or digital signature, can be combined with a zero knowledge proof. Particularly, we propose the multi-argument zero-knowledge argument (MAZKA) algorithm, which can verify data by exposing only the part to be verified and also verify that the part of data has not been manipulated compared to the original. In addition, the proposed algorithm satisfies the adaptive proof of knowledge, perfect zero-knowledze and combinatorial succinctness conditions.
As one of the most valuable technologies, blockchains have received extensive attention from researchers and industry circles and are widely applied in various scenarios. However, data on a blockchain cannot be deleted. As a result, it is impossible to clean invalid and sensitive data and correct erroneous data. This, to a certain extent, hinders the application of blockchains in supply chains and Internet of Things. To address this problem, this study presents a deletable and modifiable blockchain scheme (DMBlockChain) based on record verification trees (RVTrees) and the multisignature scheme. (1) In this scheme, an RVTree structure is designed and added to the block structure. The RVTree can not only ensure that a record is true and valid but, owing to its unique binary structure, also verify whether modification and deletion requests are valid. (2) In DMBlockChain, the multisignature mechanism is also introduced. This mechanism requires the stakeholders’ signatures for each modification or deletion request and thus ensures that a record will not be modified arbitrarily. A user’s request is deemed valid only if it is dually verified by the RVTree and the multisignature mechanism. The analysis finds that DMBlockChain can provide a secure and valid means for modifying and deleting records in a block while ensuring the integrity of the block and that DMBlockChain can effectively save space in some scenarios that require frequent records modification.
Anurag Gharat, Pratik Aher, Punit Chaudhari, Bhavana Alte
Public Healthcare issues have been the main focus of any governing body for the last decade. Each day a large amount of Healthcare data is generated by individual and Medical Organizations. This information is considered highly sensitive and private, which needed to be securely stored and protected against unauthorized access. In a traditional system, all the data is stored in a centralized system which comes with lots of drawbacks. This where blockchain technology comes in because of its Peer-To-Peer nature and Security. Several studies highlight the importance of blockchain and how it can be implemented in Electronic Medical Record(EMR) systems which face problems regarding privacy,security,decentralization and confidentiality.In this paper, We explain how blockchain technology may be utilised to improve EMR systems and how it could be a solution to these problems. We offer a framework for implementing blockchain technology in the healthcare industry for EMR.The aim of our proposed framework is first to implement blockchain technology for EHR and secondly to provide secure storage of electronic records by defining granular access rules for the users of the proposed framework. Moreover,this framework provides the EHR system with the benefits of a blockchain-based solution that is scalable, secure, and integrated.
The relational database has become one of the mainstream tools for data storage and management. However, there are two main types of threats to relational databases: external attacks and internal tampering threats. In this paper, we focus on the internal tampering threats and propose a tamper-proof detection middleware named TDRB to provide efficient tamper-proof detection for relational databases. Within the TDRB middleware framework, raw data is still stored and queried from the relational database, while the hash digest of the critical data in the relational database is synchronously migrated to the blockchain for tamper detection. Based on this method, we leverage blockchain’s immutability to detect data tamper and maintain the advanced features of relational databases to better support ease of data persistence, complex queries, and large storage capacity. We also propose a performance improvement mechanism that involves connecting the blockchain and relational database to improve throughput and mitigate performance impact. A series of experiments indicate that the TDRB middleware can accurately detect the tampering information during arbitrary tampering with the relational database and the cache database. Compare with the baseline, with the increase of cache hit rate, the TDRB middleware query speed increased by 93.1%, update speed increased by 16.3%, delete speed increased by 16.1%, and join operation average speed increased by 95.2%. Given its generality, the TDRB middleware can be flexibly and conveniently integrated into third-party platforms.
Cryptography algorithms play a vital role in Information Security and Management. To test the credibility, reliability of metadata exchanged between the sender and the recipient party of IoT applications different algorithms must be used. The hashing is also used for Electronic Signatures and based on how hard it is to hack them; various algorithms have different safety protocols. SHA-1, SHA-2, SHA3, MD4, and MD5, etc. are still the most accepted hash protocols. This article suggests the relevance of hash functions and the comparative study of different cryptographic techniques using blockchain technology. Cloud storage is amongst the most daunting issues, guaranteeing the confidentiality of encrypted data on virtual computers. Several protection challenges exist in the cloud, including encryption, integrity, and secrecy. Different encryption strategies are seeking to solve these problems of data protection to an immense degree. This article will focus on the comparative analysis of the SHA family and MD5 based on the speed of operation, its security concerns, and the need of using the Secure Hash Algorithm.
Adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) in education brings many benefits. However, the poor implementation of access control of educational data produced by the IoT devices has brought students’ and teachers’ privacy into danger. Attackers can access educational data that they are not permitted to access and even erase the records during access. To tackle this problem, we employ blockchain technology to guarantee the integrity of access control rules and trace the records of access events. In this paper, we propose a blockchain‐based access control scheme for the data produced by IoT devices. The scheme consists of three components: (1) a well‐implemented data collection module that is deployed in smart classrooms, which collects and uploads data about the real‐time situation inside the smart classroom to the data center; (2) a MongoDB‐based data center and its control module that makes access control decisions based on the verification of the permissions of visitors, where the permissions are managed by blockchain; and (3) a customized blockchain system that stores and keeps security policy updates of the role‐based access control module and records access events in a trusted way. Our analysis indicates that the proposed access control scheme guarantees the correctness of the access control process and makes the access of collected educational data auditable and responsible. Our system collectively analyzes the context of the smart classroom and is capable of detecting multiple scenarios such as absence, lateness, and gunshot. We show how the scheme preserves students’ and teachers’ privacy by carrying out extensive experimental studies. The results indicate that the proposed data management system can give correct responses as quickly as a traditional data server does while preserving privacy.
Jiashun Zhang, Gang Xu, Xiu‐Bo Chen, Haseeb Ahmad · 6 authors
With the rapid development of cloud computing technology, cloud services have now become a new business model for information services. The cloud server provides the IT resources required by customers in a self-service manner... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on Tech Science Press
With the development of blockchain technology, more and more applications need out-of-chain data. Thus, blockchain oracles have become an important bridge for transferring data on and off the chain. This paper studies the mainstream blockchain oracles scheme, summarizes the shortcomings of the existing schemes and proposes a new blockchain oracle scheme based on BLS (Bohen-Lynn-Shacham) aggregation signature to ensure that off-chain data can be transferred into the blockchain in a trusted and reliable way. Specifically, the scheme uses multiple blockchain oracles to avoid the single point of failure or even a small number of malicious oracles, and improve the credibility of data. At the same time, it not only uses BLS aggregate signature to reduce the storage cost and communication overhead, but also uses commitment mechanisms to ensure the reliability and authenticity of the data. Besides, the simulation results show that the scheme can meet the practical application requirements.
Nowadays, special attention is directed to trust issues in the Decentralized Online Social Network (DOSN). In a distributed system for social networking, interactions and collaborations can be unreliable because some users resort to malicious behaviors in order to increase their trust values in the network to be chosen later by others, and launch trust-related attacks. In this unreliable situation, users will not be able to estimate the trustworthiness of the received social services’ list of recommendations. Hence, a trust management model becomes a necessity in order to overcome its trust-related attacks and to recommend trustworthy social services. In this respect, we propose a new trust management model that helps prevent trust-related attacks in order to ensure a reliable environment. Towards this end, our suggested model implements a new technology, called blockchain. Based on the studied trust-related attacks, we intend to add logical security to blockchain since this technology takes into account only the physical security. Evaluation values show the effectiveness of our model.
Blockchain is a technology that provides security features that can be used for more than just cryptocurrencies. Blockchain achieves security by saving the information of one block in the next block. Changing the information of one block will require changes to all the next block in order for that change to take effect. Which makes it unfeasible for such an attack to happen. However, the structure of how blockchain works makes the last block always vulnerable for attacks, given that its information is not saved yet in any block. This allows malicious node to change the information of the last block and generate a new block and broadcast it to the network. Given that the nodes always follow the longer chain wins rule, the malicious node will win given that it has the longest chain in the network. This paper suggests a solution to this issue by making the nodes send consistency check messages before broadcasting a block. If the nodes manage to successfully verify that the node that generated a new block hasn’t tampered with the blockchain than that block will be broadcasted. The results of the simulation show suggested protocol provided better security compared to the regular blockchain.
As the next‐generation power grid system, the smart grid can realize the balance of supply and demand and help in communication security and privacy protection. However, real‐time power consumption data collection might expose the users’ privacy information, such as their living habits and economic conditions. In addition, during the process of data transmission, it may lead to data inconsistency between the user side and the storage side. Blockchain provides tamper‐resistant and traceable characteristics for solving these problems, and ring signature schemes provide an anonymous authentication mechanism. Therefore, in this work, we consider the applications of ring signature scheme in smart grid based on blockchain. We introduce the notion of multi‐authority traceable ring signature (MA‐TRS) scheme for distributed setting. In our scheme, there is an auditing node that can distinguish the identity of the real signer from the ring without any secret information. Last but not least, we prove that the proposed scheme is unforgeable, anonymous, and traceable.
Internet of Things (IoT) aims to simplify the collection of the distributed data in a global manufacturing business, sharing and processing of information and knowledge across many collaborating partners using appropriate information system architecture. As with the IoT, convergence with blockchain technology that processes data, privacy and security-related issues, and data policies (e.g., regulatory compliance) may apply to data and software artefacts. Besides, blockchain technology could contribute to the more intelligent and flexible handling of transactional data through appropriate convergence with IoT technology in supporting data integration and processing. This paper examines this hybrid architecture’s privacy, security, and policy-related issues to appreciate the convergence and understand the integration of IoT and blockchain technology. This paper primarily identifies common trends focusing on relevant topics in blockchain-based IoT technology research and by highlighting the need to explore security issues further – for example, data privacy challenges in the manufacturing industry.