Biblio

In the Internet of Things (IoT), devices can interconnect and communicate autonomously, which requires devices to authenticate each other to exchange meaningful information. Otherwise, these things become vulnerable to various attacks. The conventional security protocols are not suitable for IoT applications due to the high computation and storage demand. Therefore, we proposed a blockchain-enabled secure storage and communication scheme for IoT applications, called BSS. The scheme ensures identification, authentication, and data integrity. Our scheme uses the security advantages of blockchain and helps to create safe zones (trust batch) where authenticated objects interconnect securely and do communication. A secure and robust trust mechanism is employed to build these batches, where each device has to authenticate itself before joining the trust batch. The obtained results satisfy the IoT security requirements with 60% reduced computation, storage and communication cost compared with state-of-the-art schemes. BSS also withstands various cyberattacks such as impersonation, message replay, man-in-the-middle, and botnet attacks.

Digital identity is the key element of digital transformation in representing any real-world entity in the digital form. To ensure a successful digital future the requirement for an effective digital identity is paramount, especially as demand increases for digital services. Several Identity Management (IDM) systems are developed to cope with identity effectively, nonetheless, existing IDM systems have some limitations corresponding to identity and its management such as sovereignty, storage and access control, security, privacy and safeguarding, all of which require further improvement. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is an emerging IDM system which incorporates several required features to ensure that identity is sovereign, secure, reliable and generic. It is an evolving IDM system, thus it is essential to analyse its various features to determine its effectiveness in coping with the dynamic requirements of identity and its current challenges. This paper proposes numerous governing principles of SSI to analyse any SSI ecosystem and its effectiveness. Later, based on the proposed governing principles of SSI, it performs a comparative analysis of the two most popular SSI ecosystems uPort and Sovrin to present their effectiveness and limitations.

A neural key exchange is a secret key exchange technique based on neural synchronization of the neural network. Since the neural key exchange is based on synchronizing weights within the neural network structure, the security of the algorithm does not depend on the attacker's computational capabilities. However, due to the neural key exchange's repetitive mutual-learning processes, using explicit user authentication methods -such as a public key certificate- is inefficient due to high communication overhead. Implicit authentication based on information that only authorized users know can significantly reduce overhead in communications. However, there was a lack of realistic methods to distribute secret information for authentication among authorized users. In this paper, we propose the concept idea of distributing shared secret values for implicit authentication based on the randomness of the public blockchain. Moreover, we present a method to prevent the unintentional disclosure of shared secret values to third parties in the network due to the transparency of the blockchain.

Today’s rapidly changing world, is observing fast development of QR-code and Blockchain technologies. It is worth noting that these technologies have also received a boost for sharing. The user gets the opportunity to receive / send funds, issue invoices for payment and transfer, for example, Bitcoin using QR-code. This paper discusses the security of using the symbiosis of Blockchain and QR-code technologies, and the vulnerabilities that arise in this case. The following vulnerabilities were considered: fake QR generators, stickers for cryptomats, phishing using QR-codes, create Malicious QR-Codes for Hack Phones and Other Scanners. The possibility of creating the following malicious QR codes while using the QRGen tool was considered: SQL Injections, XSS (Cross-Site Scripting), Command Injection, Format String, XXE (XML External Entity), String Fuzzing, SSI (Server-Side Includes) Injection, LFI (Local File Inclusion) / Directory Traversal.

The use of Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B) for aircraft tracking and flight management operations is widely used today. However, ADS-B is prone to several cyber-security threats due to the lack of data authentication and encryption. Recently, Blockchain has emerged as new paradigm that can provide promising solutions in decentralized systems. Furthermore, software containers and Microservices facilitate the scaling of Blockchain implementations within cloud computing environment. When fused together, these technologies could help improve Air Traffic Control (ATC) processing of ADS-B data. In this paper, a Blockchain implementation within a Microservices framework for ADS-B data verification is proposed. The aim of this work is to enable data feeds coming from third-party receivers to be processed and correlated with that of the ATC ground station receivers. The proposed framework could mitigate ADS- B security issues of message spoofing and anomalous traffic data. and hence minimize the cost of ATC infrastructure by throughout third-party support.

Blockchain technology is a decentralized ledger of all transactions across peer to peer network. Being decentralized in nature, a blockchain is highly secure as no single user can alter or remove an entry in the blockchain. The security of office premises and data is a very major concern for any organization. This paper majorly focuses on its application of blockchain technology in security surveillance. This paper proposes a blockchain based multi level network model for security surveillance system. The proposed system architecture is composed of different blockchain based systems connected to a multi level decentralized blockchain system to insure authentication, secure storage, Integrity and accountability.

Managing identity across an ever-growing digital services landscape has become one of the most challenging tasks for security experts. Over the years, several Identity Management (IDM) systems were introduced and adopted to tackle with the growing demand of an identity. In this series, a recently emerging IDM system is Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) which offers greater control and access to users regarding their identity. This distinctive feature of the SSI IDM system represents a major development towards the availability of sovereign identity to users. uPort is an emerging open-source identity management system providing sovereign identity to users, organisations, and other entities. As an emerging identity management system, it requires meticulous analysis of its architecture, working, operational services, efficiency, advantages and limitations. Therefore, this paper contributes towards achieving all of these objectives. Firstly, it presents the architecture and working of the uPort identity management system. Secondly, it develops a Decentralized Application (DApp) to demonstrate and evaluate its operational services and efficiency. Finally, based on the developed DApp and experimental analysis, it presents the advantages and limitations of the uPort identity management system.

The Extended Triple Diffie-Hellman (X3DH) protocol has been used for years as the basis of secure communication establishment among parties (i.e, humans and devices) over the Internet. However, such a protocol has several limits. It is typically based on a single trust third-party server that represents a single point of failure (SPoF) being consequently exposed to well- known Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks. In order to address such a limit, several solutions have been proposed so far that are often cost expensive and difficult to be maintained. The objective of this paper is to propose a BlockChain-Based X3DH (BCB-X3DH) protocol that allows eliminating such a SPoF, also simplifying its maintenance. Specifically, it combines the well- known X3DH security mechanisms with the intrinsic features of data non-repudiation and immutability that are typical of Smart Contracts. Furthermore, different implementation approaches are discussed to suits both human-to-human and device-to-device scenarios. Experiments compared the performance of both X3DH and BCB-X3DH.

Blockchain will increase supply chains' productivity and accountability, and have a positive effect on anything from warehousing to distribution to payment. To bridge the supply chain visibility gap, blockchain is being deployed because of its security features like immutability, tamper-resistant and hash proof. Blockchain integration with IoT increases the traceability and verifiability of the supply chain management and drastically eradicates the fraudulent activities including bribery, money laundering, forged checks, sanction violations, misrepresentation of goods and services. Blockchain can help to cross-check the verification, identification and authenticity of IoT devices to reduce the frequency and ramifications of fraud in supply chain management. The epidemic outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has disrupted many global supply chains. The Geneva-based World Economic Forum declared that SARS-CoV-2 exposed supply chain failures can be tackled by blockchain technology. This paper explores the modern methodologies of supply chain management with integration of blockchain and IoT.

As the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can play a vital role to collect information remotely in a military battlefield, researchers have shown great interest to reveal the domain of internet of battlefield Things (IoBT). In a rescue mission on a battlefield, UAV can collect data from different regions to identify the casualty of a soldier. One of the major challenges in IoBT is to identify the soldier in a complex environment. Image processing algorithm can be helpful if proper methodology can be applied to identify the victims. However, due to the limited hardware resources of a UAV, processing task can be handover to the nearby edge computing server for offloading the task as every second is very crucial in a battlefield. Furthermore, to avoid any third-party interaction in the network and to store the data securely, blockchain can help to create a trusted network as it forms a distributed ledger among the participants. This paper proposes a UAV assisted casualty detection scheme based on image processing algorithm where data is protected using blockchain technology. Result analysis has been conducted to identify the victims on the battlefield successfully using image processing algorithm and network issues like throughput and delay has been analyzed in details using public-key cryptography.

Supply chain management (SCM) system is a main requirement for manufacturers and companies to cooperate. There are many management techniques to manage supply chains, such as using Excel sheets. However, that technique is ineffective, insecure, and sensitive to human errors. In this paper, we propose CLOUDITY, a cloud-based SCM system using SELAT (Selective Market) and Blockchain system. We modify JUGO architecture to develop SELAT as a connector between users and cloud service providers. Also, we apply the Blockchain concept to make more secure system. CLOUDITY system can solve several cases: resource provisioning, service selection, authentication, and access control. Also, it improves the data security by checking every data changes of the supply chain management system using Blockchain system.

We study the problem of generation of cycles, chains and graphs of pairing-friendly elliptic curves using in succinct non-interactive arguments for knowledge protocols in blockchain. The task to build a “stick” for existing MNT753 cycle is reduced to the factorization problem for big numbers. Together with graphs of pairing friendly elliptic curves we consider auxiliary graphs of their orders (primes or irreducible polynomials) associated to vertices and embedding degrees to edges. Numerical experiments allow us to conjecture that (except of MNT case): 1) for any fixed embedding degrees there exist only finite number of such cycles and, hence, there are no families of such cycles; 2) chains of prime order are very rare; we suppose that there are no polynomial families of such chains. It is hard to find a family of pairing friendly elliptic curves with the base field order q(x) such that ζk ∈ Q[x]/(q(x)) for k \textbackslashtextgreater 6. From other hand our examples show that we can apply Brezing-Weng construction with k=6 and D=3 iteratively to obtain chains of length 3-4. We build 1) a family of 1-chains with embedding degrees 8 and 7, where all orders are given by cyclotomic polynomials; 2) a combination of MNT cycle and near-MNT curve.

Convergence of critical infrastructure and data, including government and enterprise, to the dynamic Internet of Things (IoT) environment and future digital ecosystems exhibit significant challenges for privacy and identity in these interconnected domains. There are an increasing variety of devices and technologies being introduced, rendering existing security tools inadequate to deal with the dynamic scale and varying actors. The IoT is increasingly data driven with user sovereignty being essential - and actors in varying scenarios including user/customer, device, manufacturer, third party processor, etc. Therefore, flexible frameworks and diverse security requirements for such sensitive environments are needed to secure identities and authenticate IoT devices and their data, protecting privacy and integrity. In this paper we present a review of the principles, techniques and algorithms that can be adapted from other distributed computing paradigms. Said review will be used in application to the development of a collaborative decision-making framework for heterogeneous entities in a distributed domain, whilst simultaneously highlighting privacy preserving issues in the IoT. In addition, we present our trust-based privacy preserving schema using Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence. While still in its infancy, this application could help maintain a level of privacy and nonrepudiation in collaborative environments such as the IoT.

Medical institutions are increasingly adopting IoT platforms to share data, communicate rapidly and improve healthcare treatment abilities. However, this trend is also raising the risk of potential data manipulation attacks. In decentralized networks, defense mechanisms against external entities have been widely enabled while protection against insider attackers is still the weakest link of the chain. Most of the platforms are based on the assumption that all the insider nodes are trustworthy. However, these nodes are exploiting of this assumption to lead manipulation attacks and violate data integrity and reliability without being detected. To address this problem, we propose a secure decentralized management system able to detect insider malicious nodes. Our proposal is based on a three layer architecture: storage layer, blockchain based network layer and IoT devices layer. In this paper, we mainly focus on the network layer where we propose to integrate a decentralized trust based authorization module. This latter allows updating dynamically the nodes access rights by observing and evaluating their behavior. To this aim, we combine probabilistic modelling and stochastic modelling to classify and predict the nodes behavior. Conducted performance evaluation and security analysis show that our proposition provides efficient detection of malicious nodes compared to other trust based management approaches.

The mechanism for distributing information on the source of the attack by combining blockchain technology with the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) can be done so that DDoS attack mitigation becomes more flexible, saves resources and costs. Also, by informing the blacklisted Internet Protocol(IP), each IPS can share attack source information so that attack traffic blocking can be carried out on IPS that are closer to the source of the attack. Therefore, the attack traffic passing through the network can be drastically reduced because the attack traffic has been blocked on the IPS that is closer to the attack source. The blocking of existing DDoS attack traffic is generally carried out on each IPS without a mechanism to share information on the source of the attack so that each IPS cannot cooperate. Also, even though the DDoS attack traffic did not reach the server because it had been blocked by IPS, the attack traffic still flooded the network so that network performance was reduced. Through smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, it is possible to inform the source of the attack or blacklisted IP addresses without requiring additional infrastructure. The blacklisted IP address is used by IPS to detect and handle DDoS attacks. Through the blacklisted IP distribution scheme, testing and analysis are carried out to see information on the source of the attack on each IPS and the attack traffic that passes on the network. The result is that each IPS can have the same blacklisted IP so that each IPS can have the same attack source information. The results also showed that the attack traffic through the network infrastructure can be drastically reduced. Initially, the total number of attack packets had an average of 115,578 reduced to 27,165.

Achieving efficient and secure accesses to real-time information from the designated IoT node is the fundamental key requirement for the applications of the Internet of Things. However, IoT nodes are prone to physical attacks, public channels reveal the sensitive information, and gateways that manage the IoT nodes suffer from the single-point failure, thereby causing the security and privacy problems. In this paper, a blockchain-based user remote authentication scheme using physical unclonable functions (PUFs) is proposed to overcome these problems. The PUFs provide physically secure identities for the IoT nodes and the blockchain acts as a distributed database to manage the key materials reliably for gateways. The security analysis is conducted and shows that our scheme realizes reliable security features and resists various attacks. Furthermore, a prototype was implemented to prove our scheme is efficient, scalable, and suitable for IoT scenarios.

Wireless sensors are often deployed in environments where it is difficult for them to discern friend from enemy. An example case is a military tactical scenario, where sensors are deployed to map the location of an item but where some of the nodes have been compromised or where there are other malicious nodes present. In this scenario, sharing data with other network nodes may present a critical security risk to the sensor nodes. Blockchain technology, with its ability to house a secure distributed ledger, offers a possible solution. However, blockchain applications for Wireless Sensor Networks suffer from poor latency in block propagation which in turn decreases throughput and network scalability. Several researchers have proposed solutions for improved network throughput. In this work, a comparison of these existing works is performed leading to a taxonomy of existing algorithms. Characteristics consistently found in algorithms reporting improved throughput are presented and, later, these characteristics are used in the development of a new algorithm for improving throughput. The proposed algorithm utilizes a proof-of- authority consensus algorithm with a node trust-based scheme. The proposed algorithm shows strong results over the base case algorithm and was evaluated with blockchain network simulations of up to 20000 nodes.

Nowadays the use of the Internet is growing; E-voting system has been used by different countries because it reduces the cost and the time which used to consumed by using traditional voting. When the voter wants to access the E-voting system through the web application, there are requirements such as a web browser and a server. The voter uses the web browser to reach to a centralized database. The use of a centralized database for the voting system has some security issues such as Data modification through the third party in the network due to the use of the central database system as well as the result of the voting is not shown in real-time. However, this paper aims to provide an E-voting system with high security by using blockchain. Blockchain provides a decentralized model that makes the network Reliable, safe, flexible, and able to support real-time services.

Access to data at large scales expedites the progress of research in medical fields. Nevertheless, accessibility to patients' data faces significant challenges on regulatory, organizational and technical levels. In light of this, we present a novel approach based on the crowdsourcing paradigm to solve this data scarcity problem. Utilizing the infrastructure that blockchain provides, our decentralized platform enables researchers to solicit contributions to their well-defined research study from a large crowd of volunteers. Furthermore, to overcome the challenge of breach of privacy and mutual trust, we employed the cryptographic primitive of Zero-knowledge Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK). This not only allows participants to make contributions without exposing their privacy-sensitive health data, but also provides a means for a distributed network of users to verify the validity of the contributions in an efficient manner. Finally, since without an incentive mechanism in place, the crowdsourcing platform would be rendered ineffective, we incorporated smart contracts to ensure a fair reciprocal exchange of data for reward between patients and researchers.

Self-sovereign identities provide user autonomy and immutability to individual identities and full control to their identity owners. The immutability and control are possible by implementing identities in a decentralized manner on blockchains that are specially designed for identity operations such as Hyperledger Indy. As with any type of identity, self-sovereign identities too deal with Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of the identity holders and comes with the usual risks of privacy and security. This study examined certain scenarios of personal data disclosure via credential exchanges between such identities and risks of man-in-the-middle attacks in the blockchain based identity system Hyperledger Indy. On the basis of the findings, the paper proposes the following enhancements: 1) A novel attribute sensitivity score model for self-sovereign identity agents to ascertain the sensitivity of attributes shared in credential exchanges 2) A method of mitigating man-in-the-middle attacks between peer self-sovereign identities and 3) A novel quantitative model for determining a credential issuer's reputation based on the number of issued credentials in a window period, which is then utilized to calculate an overall confidence level score for the issuer.

In a block channel IoT system, sensitive details can be leaked by means of the proof of work or address check, as data or application Validation data is applied on the blockchain. In this, the zero-knowledge evidence is applied to a smart metering system to show how to improve the anonymity of the blockchain for privacy safety without disclosing information as a public key. Within this article, a blockchain has been implemented to deter security risks such as data counterfeiting by utilizing intelligent meters. Zero-Knowledge Proof, an anonymity blockchain technology, has been implemented through block inquiry to prevent threats to security like personal information infringement. It was suggested that intelligent contracts would be used to avoid falsification of intelligent meter data and abuse of personal details.

This paper investigates a secure data exchange between many small distributed consumers/prosumers and the aggregator in the process of energy balancing. It addresses the challenges of ensuring data exchange in a simple, scalable, and affordable way. The communication platform for data exchange is using Ethereum Blockchain technology. It provides a distributed ledger database across a distributed network, supports simple connectivity for new stakeholders, and enables many small entities to contribute with their flexible energy to the system balancing. The architecture of a simulation/emulation environment provides a direct connection of a relational database to the Ethereum network, thus enabling dynamic data management. In addition, it extends security of the environment with security mechanisms of relational databases. Proof-of-concept setup with the simulation of system balancing processes, confirms the suitability of the solution for secure data exchange in the market, operation, and measurement area. For the most intensive and space-consuming measurement data exchange, we have investigated data aggregation to ensure performance optimisation of required computation and space usage.

Blockchain is being pursued by a growing number of people with its characteristics of openness, transparency, and decentralization. At the same time, how to secure privacy protection in such an open and transparent ledger is an urgent issue to be solved for deep study. Therefore, this paper proposes a protocol based on Secure multi-party computation, which can merge and sign different transaction messages under the anonymous condition by using Pedersen commitment and Schnorr Signature. Through the rationality proof and security analysis, this paper demonstrates the private transaction is safe under the semi-honest model. And its computational cost is less than the equivalent multi-signature model. The research has made some innovative contributions to the privacy computing theory.

The blockchain technology revolution and the use of blockchains in various applications have resulted in many companies and programmers developing and customizing specific fit-for-purpose consensus algorithms. Security and performance are determined by the chosen consensus algorithm; hence, the reliability and security of these algorithms must be assured and tested, which requires an understanding of all the security assumptions that make such algorithms correct and byzantine fault-tolerant.This paper studies the "security ingredients" that enable a given consensus algorithm to achieve safety, liveness, and byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) in both permissioned and permissionless blockchain systems. The key contributions of this paper are the organization of these requirements and a new taxonomy that describes the requirements for security. The CAP Theorem is utilized to explain important tradeoffs between consistency and availability in consensus algorithm design, which are crucial depending on the specific application of a given algorithm. This topic has also been explored previously by De Angelis. However, this paper expands that prior explanation and dilemma of consistency vs. availability and then combines this with Buterin's Trilemma to complete the overall exposition of tradeoffs.

Cloud-hosted applications are prone to targeted attacks such as DDoS, advanced persistent threats, cryptojacking which threaten service availability. Recently, methods for threat information sharing and defense require co-operation and trust between multiple domains/entities. There is a need for mechanisms that establish distributed trust to allow for such a collective defense. In this paper, we present a novel threat intelligence sharing and defense system, namely “DefenseChain”, to allow organizations to have incentive-based and trustworthy co-operation to mitigate the impact of cyber attacks. Our solution approach features a consortium Blockchain platform to obtain threat data and select suitable peers to help with attack detection and mitigation. We propose an economic model for creation and sustenance of the consortium with peers through a reputation estimation scheme that uses `Quality of Detection' and `Quality of Mitigation' metrics. Our evaluation experiments with DefenseChain implementation are performed on an Open Cloud testbed with Hyperledger Composer and in a simulation environment. Our results show that the DefenseChain system overall performs better than state-of-the-art decision making schemes in choosing the most appropriate detector and mitigator peers. In addition, we show that our DefenseChain achieves better performance trade-offs in terms of metrics such as detection time, mitigation time and attack reoccurence rate. Lastly, our validation results demonstrate that our DefenseChain can effectively identify rational/irrational service providers.