Biblio

This paper deals with how to implement a system that extends insider threat behavior data using private blockchain technology to overcome the limitations of insider threat datasets. Currently, insider threat data is completely undetectable in existing datasets for new methods of insider threat due to the lack of insider threat scenarios and abstracted event behavior. Also, depending on the size of the company, it was difficult to secure a sample of data with the limit of a small number of leaks among many general users in other organizations. In this study, we consider insiders who pose a threat to all businesses as public enemies. In addition, we proposed a system that can use a private blockchain to expand insider threat behavior data between network participants in real-time to ensure reliability and transparency.

Without security, any network system loses its efficiency, reliability, and resilience. With the huge integration of the ICT capabilities, the Electric Vehicle (EV) as a transportation form in cities is becoming more and more affordable and able to reply to citizen and environmental expectations. However, the EV vulnerability to cyber-attacks is increasing which intensifies its negative impact on societies. This paper targets the cybersecurity issues for Connected Electric Vehicles (CEVs) in parking lots where a peer-to-peer(P2P) energy transaction system is launched. A False Data Injection Attack (FDIA) on the electricity price signal is considered and a Machine Learning/SVM classification protocol is used to detect and extract the right values. Simulation results are conducted to prove the effectiveness of this proposed model.

The outsourcing of databases is very popular among IT companies and industries. It acts as a solution for businesses to ensure availability of the data for their users. The solution of outsourcing the database is to encrypt the data in a form where the database service provider can perform relational operations over the encrypted database. At the same time, the associated security risk of data leakage prevents many potential industries from deploying it. In this paper, we present a secure outsourcing database search scheme (BASDB) with the use of a smart contract for search operation over index of encrypted database and storing encrypted relational database in the cloud. Our proposed scheme BASDB is a simple and practical solution for effective search on encrypted relations and is well resistant to information leakage against attacks like search and access pattern leakage.

As the COVID-19 continues to spread globally, more and more companies are transforming into remote online offices, leading to the expansion of electronic signatures. However, the existing electronic signatures platform has the problem of data-centered management. The system is subject to data loss, tampering, and leakage when an attack from outside or inside occurs. In response to the above problems, this paper designs an electronic signature solution and implements a prototype system based on the consortium blockchain. The solution divides the contract signing process into four states: contract upload, initiation signing, verification signing, and confirm signing. The signing process is mapped with the blockchain-linked data. Users initiate the signature transaction by signing the uploaded contract's hash. The sign state transition is triggered when the transaction is uploaded to the blockchain under the consensus mechanism and the smart contract control, which effectively ensures the integrity of the electronic contract and the non-repudiation of the electronic signature. Finally, the blockchain performance test shows that the system can be applied to the business scenario of contract signing.

The access control mechanism of most consortium blockchain is implemented through traditional Certificate Authority scheme based on trust chain and centralized key management such as PKI/CA at present. However, the uneven power distribution of CA nodes may cause problems with leakage of certificate keys, illegal issuance of certificates, malicious rejection of certificates issuance, manipulation of issuance logs and metadata, it could compromise the security and dependability of consortium blockchain. Therefore, this paper design and implement a Certificate Authority scheme based on trust ring model that can not only enhance the reliability of consortium blockchain, but also ensure high performance. Combined public key, transformation matrix and elliptic curve cryptography are applied to the scheme to generate and store keys in a cluster of CA nodes dispersedly and securely for consortium nodes. It greatly reduced the possibility of malicious behavior and key leakage. To achieve the immutability of logs and metadata, the scheme also utilized public blockchain and smart contract technology to organize the whole procedure of certificate issuance, the issuance logs and metadata for certificate validation are stored in public blockchain. Experimental results showed that the scheme can surmount the disadvantages of the traditional scheme while maintaining sufficiently good performance, including issuance speed and storage efficiency of certificates.

Smart contracts are usually financial-related, which makes them attractive attack targets. Many static analysis tools have been developed to facilitate the contract audit process, but not all of them take account of two special features of smart contracts: (1) The external variables, like time, are constrained by real-world factors; (2) The internal variables persist between executions. Since these features import implicit constraints into contracts, they significantly affect the performance of static tools, such as causing errors in reachability analysis and resulting in false positives. In this paper, we conduct a systematic study on implicit constraints from three aspects. First, we summarize the implicit constraints in smart contracts. Second, we evaluate the impact of such constraints on the state-of-the-art static tools. Third, we propose a lightweight but effective mitigation method named ConSym to deal with such constraints and integrate it into OSIRIS. The evaluation result shows that ConSym can filter out 96% of false positives and reduce false negatives by two-thirds.

In the smart grid, the sharing of power data among various energy entities can make the data play a higher value. However, there may be unauthorized access while sharing data, which makes many entities unwilling to share their data to prevent data leakage. Based on blockchain and ABAC (Attribute-based Access Control) technology, this paper proposes an access control scheme, so that users can achieve fine-grained access control of their data when sharing them. The solution uses smart contract to achieve automated and reliable policy evaluation. IPFS (Interplanetary File System) is used for off-chain distributed storage to share the storage pressure of blockchain and guarantee the reliable storage of data. At the same time, all processes in the system are stored in the blockchain, ensuring the accountability of the system. Finally, the experiment proves the feasibility of the proposed scheme.

Blockchain has emerged as a leading technological innovation because of its indisputable safety and services in a distributed setup. Applications of blockchain are rising covering varied fields such as financial transactions, supply chains, maintenance of land records, etc. Supply chain management is a potential area that can immensely benefit from blockchain technology (BCT) along with smart contracts, making supply chain operations more reliable, safer, and trustworthy for all its stakeholders. However, there are numerous challenges such as scalability, coordination, and safety-related issues which are yet to be resolved. Multi-agent systems (MAS) offer a completely new dimension for scalability, cooperation, and coordination in distributed culture. MAS consists of a collection of automated agents who can perform a specific task intelligently in a distributed environment. In this work, an attempt has been made to develop a framework for implementing a multi-agent system for a large-scale product manufacturing supply chain with blockchain technology wherein the agents communicate with each other to monitor and organize supply chain operations. This framework eliminates many of the weaknesses of supply chain management systems. The overall goal is to enhance the performance of SCM in terms of transparency, traceability, trustworthiness, and resilience by using MAS and BCT.

Certificate Authorities (CAs) are important components for digital certificate issuances in Public Key Infrastructure(PKI). However, current CAs have some intrinsic weaknesses due to the CA-centric implementation. And when browser and operating system vendors contain a CA in the software, they place complete trust in the CA. In this paper, we utilize natural characteristics of tamper-proof and transparency of smart contracts in blockchain platforms to design an independent entity, named the CA proxy, to manage life cycle of digital certificates. This management will achieve the certificate transparency. We propose a new system architecture easy to integrate the CA proxy with current CAs through applying the blockchain oracle service. In this architecture, the CA proxy, CAs, and even professional identity verification parties can accomplish life cycle management of certificates, signature of certificates, identity verification for certificates correspondingly. The achievement of the certificate transparency through life cycle management of digital certificates in blockchain platforms, when compared with traditional CAs, solves traditional CAs' trust model weaknesses and improve the security.

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.

Transportation of people and goods is important and crucial in the context of smart cities. The trend in regard of people's mobility is moving from privately owned vehicles towards shared mobility. This trend is even stronger in urban areas, where space for parking is limited, and the mobility is supported by the public transport system, which lowers the need for private vehicles. Several challenges and barriers of currently available solutions retard a massive growth of this mobility option, such as the trust problem, data monopolism, or intermediary costs. Decentralizing mobility management is a promising approach to solve the current problems of the mobility market, allowing to move towards a more usable internet of mobility and smart transportation. Leveraging blockchain technology allows to cut intermediary costs, by utilizing smart contracts. Important in this ecosystem is the proof of identity of participants in the blockchain network. To proof the possession of the claimed identity, the private key corresponding to the wallet address is utilized, and therefore essential to protect. In this paper, a blockchain-based shared mobility platform is proposed and a proof-of-concept is shown. First, current problems and state-of-the-art systems are analyzed. Then, a decentralized concept is built based on ERC-721 tokens, implemented in a smart contract, and augmented with a Hardware Security Module (HSM) to protect the confidential key material. Finally, the system is evaluated and compared against state-of-the-art solutions.

Blockchain started with Bitcoin, but it is higher than Bitcoin. With the deepening of applied research on blockchain technology, this new technology has brought new vitality to many industries. People admire the decentralized nature of the blockchain and hope to solve the problems caused by the operation of traditional centralized institutions in a more fair and effective way. Of course, as an emerging technology, blockchain has many areas for improvement. This article explains the blockchain technology from many aspects. Starting from the typical architecture of the blockchain, the data structure and system model of the blockchain are first introduced. Then it expounds the development of consensus algorithms and compares typical consensus algorithms. Later, the focus will be on smart contracts and their application platforms. After analyzing some of the challenges currently faced by the blockchain technology, some scenarios where the blockchain is currently developing well are listed. Finally, it summarizes and looks forward to the blockchain technology.

The Industrial Internet of Things is expected to attract significant investments for Industry 4.0. In this new environment, the blockchain has immediate potential in industrial applications, providing unchanging, traceable and auditable access control. However, recent work and present in blockchain literature are based on a cloud infrastructure that requires significant investments. Furthermore, due to the placement and distance of the cloud infrastructure to industrial control devices, such approaches present a communication latency that can compromise the strict deadlines for accessing and communicating with this device. In this context, this article presents a blockchain-based access control architecture, which is deployed directly to edge devices positioned close to devices that need access control. Performance assessments of the proposed approach were carried out in practice in an industrial mining environment. The results of this assessment demonstrate the feasibility of the proposal and its performance compared to cloud-based approaches.

Our proposal aims to help solving a trust problem between licensors and licensees that occurs during the active life of license agreements. We particularly focus on licensing of proprietary intellectual property (IP) that is embedded in Internet of Things (IoT) devices and services (e.g. patented technologies). To achieve this we propose to encode the logic of license agreements into smart licenses (SL). We define a SL as a `digital twin' of a licensing contract, i.e. one or more smart contracts that represent the full or relevant parts of a licensing agreement in machine readable and executable code. As SL are self enforcing, the royalty computation and execution of payments can be fully automated in a tamper free and trustworthy way. This of course, requires to employ a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Such an Automated Licensing Payment System (ALPS) can thus automate an established business process and solve a longstanding trust issue in licensing markets. It renders traditional costly audits obsolete, lowers entry barriers for those who want to participate in licensing markets, and enables novel business models too complex with traditional approaches.

The transmission and storage process for the power data in an intelligent grid has problems such as a single point of failure in the central node, low data credibility, and malicious manipulation or data theft. The characteristics of decentralization and tamper-proofing of blockchain and its distributed storage architecture can effectively solve malicious manipulation and the single point of failure. However, there are few safe and reliable data transmission methods for the significant number and various identities of users and the complex node types in the power blockchain. Thus, this paper proposes a collaborative control scheme between on-chain and off-chain power data based on the distributed oracle technology. By building a trusted on-chain transmission mechanism based on distributed oracles, the scheme solves the credibility problem of massive data transmission and interactive power data between smart contracts and off-chain physical devices safely and effectively. Analysis and discussion show that the proposed scheme can realize the collaborative control between on-chain and off-chain data efficiently, safely, and reliably.

With the development of cloud computing, a growing number of users use the cloud to store their sensitive data. To protect privacy, users often encrypt their data before outsourcing. Searchable Symmetric Encryption (SSE) enables users to retrieve their encrypted data. Most prior SSE schemes did not focus on malicious servers, and users could not confirm the correctness of the search results. Blockchain-based SSE schemes show the potential to solve this problem. However, the expensive nature of storage overhead on the blockchain presents an obstacle to the implementation of these schemes. In this paper, we propose a lightweight blockchain-based searchable symmetric encryption scheme that reduces the space cost in the scheme by improving the data structure of the encrypted index and ensuring efficient data retrieval. Experiment results demonstrate the practicability of our scheme.

In this paper, we address the problem of privacy-preserving of the consumer's energy measurements in the context of the SG. To this end, we present a blockchain-based approach to preserve the privacy for smart grid users and to detect data forgery, replay attacks, and data injection attacks.

Fog Computing was envisioned to solve problems like high latency, mobility, bandwidth, etc. that were introduced by Cloud Computing. Fog Computing has enabled remotely connected IoT devices and sensors to be managed efficiently. Nonetheless, the Fog-Cloud paradigm suffers from various security and privacy related problems. Blockchain ensures security in a trustless way and therefore its applications in various fields are increasing rapidly. In this work, we propose a Fog-Cloud architecture that enables Blockchain to ensure security, scalability, and privacy of remotely connected IoT devices. Furthermore, our proposed architecture also efficiently manages common problems like ever-increasing latency and energy consumption that comes with the integration of Blockchain in Fog-Cloud architecture.

Named Data Networking (NDN) is an emerging network architecture, which is built by keeping data as its pivotal point. The in-network cache, one of the important characteristics, makes data packets to be available from multiple locations on the Internet. Hence data access control and their enforcement mechanisms become even more critical in the NDNs. In this paper, we propose a novel encryption-based data access control scheme using Role-Based Encryption (RBE). The inheritance property of our scheme provides a natural way to achieve efficient data access control over hierarchical content. This in turn makes our scheme suitable for large scale real world content-centric applications and services such as Netflix. Further, the proposed scheme introduces an anonymous signature-based authentication mechanism to reject bogus data requests nearer to the source, thereby preventing them from entering the network. This in turn helps to mitigate better denial of service attacks. In addition, the signature mechanism supports unlinkability, which is essential to prevent leakages of individual user's access patterns. Another major feature of the proposed scheme is that it provides accountability of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) using batch signature verification. Moreover, we have developed a transparent and secure dispute resolution and payment mechanism using smart-contract and blockchain technologies. We present a formal security analysis of our scheme to show it is provably secure against Chosen Plaintext Attacks. We also demonstrate that our scheme supports more functionalities than the existing schemes and its performance is better in terms of computation, communication and storage.

The COVID-19 pandemic has recently emerged as a worldwide health emergency that necessitates coordinated international measures. To contain the virus's spread, governments and health organisations raced to develop vaccines that would lower Covid-19 morbidity, relieve pressure on healthcare systems, and allow economies to open. Following the COVID-19 vaccine, the vaccination certificate has been adopted to help the authorities formulate policies by controlling cross-border travelling. To address serious privacy concerns and eliminate the need for third parties to retain the trust and govern user data, in this paper, we leverage blockchain technologies in developing a secure and verifiable vaccination certificate. Our approach has the advantage of utilising a hybrid approach that implements different advanced technologies, such as the self-sovereignty concept, smart contracts and interPlanetary File System (IPFS). We rely on verifiable credentials paired with smart contracts to make decisions about who can access the system and provide on-chain verification and validation of the user and issuer DIDs. The approach was further analysed, with a focus on performance and security. Our analysis shows that our solution satisfies the security requirements for immunisation certificates.

In the context of Industrial Internet logo analysis, this paper analyzes the feasibility and outstanding advantages of the blockchain technology applied to supply chain data supervision combining the pain spots of traditional supply chain management system and the technical superiority. Although blockchain technology has uprooted some deep-entrenched problems of supply chain data management system, it brings new issues to government supervision in the meanwhile. Upon the analysis of current development and the new problems of blockchain-based supply chain data management system, a new parent-children blockchain-based supply chain data supervision system is proposed, which targets to overcome the dilemma faced by the governmental regulation of supply chain. Firstly, with the characteristics of blockchain including decentralization, non-tampering and non-repudiation, the system can solve the problem puzzling the traditional database about untruthful and unreliable data, and has advantages in managing supply chain and realizing product traceability. The authenticity and reliability of data on the chain also make it easier for the government to investigate and affix the responsibility of vicious incidents. At the same time, the system adopts the parent-children chain structure and the storage mode combining on-chain and off-chain resources to overcome the contradiction between information disclosure requirements of the government and privacy protection requirements of enterprises, which can better meet the needs of various users. Moreover, the application of smart contracts can replace a large number of the manual work like repetitive data analysis, which can make analysis results more accurate and avoid human failure.

Today, the online review system cannot fully support the business since there are fraudulent activities inside. The companies that get low score reviews are induced to raise their score for the market competition capability by paying to the platform for deleting or editing the posted reviews. Moreover, the automatic filtration system of a platform removes some reviews without the awareness of the users. The low transparency platform causes low credibility toward the reviews. Blockchain technology provides exceptionally high transparency since every action can be traced publicly. However, there are some tradeoffs that need to be considered, such as cost and response time. This work tends to find the potential of using Blockchain technology in the online review system by testing four implementation approaches of the Ethereum Smart Contract. The result illustrates that using IPFS to store the data is a practical way of reducing transaction costs. Besides, preventing using Smart Contract states can significantly reduce costs too. The response time for using the Blockchain and IPFS system is slower than the centralized system. However, posting a review does not need a fast response. Thus, it is worthy of trading response time with transparency and cost. In the business view, the review posting with cost causes more difficulty to generate fake reviews. Moreover, there are other advantages over the centralized system, such as the reward system, bogus review voting, and global database. Thus, credibility improvement for a consumer online review system is a potential application of Blockchain technology.

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.

Blockchain is developing rapidly in various domains for its security. Nowadays, one of the most crucial fundamental concerns is internet security. Blockchain is a novel solution to enhance the security of network applications. However, there are no precise frameworks to secure the Internet of Vehicle (IoV) using Blockchain technology. In this paper, a blockchain-based smart internet of vehicle (BSIoV) framework has been proposed due to the cooperative, collaborative, transparent, and secure characteristics of Blockchain. The main contribution of the proposed work is to connect vehicle-related authorities together to fix a secure and transparent vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication through the peer-to-peer network connection and provide secure services to the intelligent transport systems. A key management strategy has been included to identify a vehicle in this proposed system. The proposed framework can also provide a significant solution for the data security and safety of the connected vehicles in blockchain network.

In an era of technological revolution in which everything becomes smarter and connected, the blockchain can introduce a new model for energy transactions able to grant more simplicity, security and transparency for end-users. The blockchain technology is characterized by a distributed architecture without a trusted and centralized authority, and, therefore, it appears as the perfect solutions for managing exchanges between peers. In this paper, a market algorithm that can be easily transferred to a smart contract for maximizing the match between produced and consumed energy in a micro-grid is presented. The algorithm supports energy transactions between peers (both producers and consumers) and could be one of the main executables implemented using a blockchain platform. The case study presented in this paper shows how the end-users through the blockchain could select among the possible energy transactions those more suitable to offer specific ancillary services to the grid operator without involving the grid operator itself or a third-party aggregator.