Disseminating medical data beyond the protected cloud of institutions poses severe risks to patients’ privacy, as breaches push them to the point where they abstain from full disclosure of their condition. This situation negatively impacts the patient, scientific research, and all stakeholders. To address this challenge, we propose a blockchain-based data sharing framework that sufficiently addresses the access control challenges associated with sensitive data stored in the cloud using immutability and built-in autonomy properties of the blockchain. Our system is based on a permissioned blockchain which allows access to only invited, and hence verified users. As a result of this design, further accountability is guaranteed as all users are already known and a log of their actions is kept by the blockchain. The system permits users to request data from the shared pool after their identities and cryptographic keys are verified. The evidence from the system evaluation shows that our scheme is lightweight, scalable, and efficient.
Mandrita Banerjee, Junghee Lee, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo
Abstract Internet of Things (IoT) devices are increasingly being found in civilian and military contexts, ranging from smart cities and smart grids to Internet-of-Medical-Things, Internet-of-Vehicles, Internet-of-Military-Things, Internet-of-Battlefield-Things, etc. In this paper, we survey articles presenting IoT security solutions published in English since January 2016. We make a number of observations, including the lack of publicly available IoT datasets that can be used by the research and practitioner communities. Given the potentially sensitive nature of IoT datasets, there is a need to develop a standard for sharing IoT datasets among the research and practitioner communities and other relevant stakeholders. Thus, we posit the potential for blockchain technology in facilitating secure sharing of IoT datasets (e.g., using blockchain to ensure the integrity of shared datasets) and securing IoT systems, before presenting two conceptual blockchain-based approaches. We then conclude this paper with nine potential research questions.
The deployment of cloud storage services has significant benefits in managing data for users. However, it also causes many security concerns, and one of them is data integrity. Public verification techniques can enable a user to employ a third-party auditor to verify the data integrity on behalf of her/him, whereas existing public verification schemes are vulnerable to procrastinating auditors who may not perform verifications on time. Furthermore, most of public verification schemes are constructed on the public key infrastructure (PKI), and thereby suffer from certificate management problem. In this paper, we propose a certificateless public verification scheme against procrastinating auditors (CPVPA) by using blockchain technology. The key idea is to require auditors to record each verification result into a transaction on a blockchain. Because transactions on the blockchain are time-sensitive, the verification can be time-stamped after the transaction is recorded into the blockchain, which enables users to check whether auditors perform the verifications at the prescribed time. Moreover, CPVPA is built on certificateless cryptography, and is free from the certificate management problem. We present rigorous security proofs to demonstrate the security of CPVPA, and conduct a comprehensive performance evaluation to show that CPVPA is efficient.
Blockchain is a shared distributed digital ledger technology that can better facilitate data management, provenance and security, and has the potential to transform healthcare. Importantly, blockchain represents a data architecture, whose application goes far beyond Bitcoin – the cryptocurrency that relies on blockchain and has popularized the technology. In the health sector, blockchain is being aggressively explored by various stakeholders to optimize business processes, lower costs, improve patient outcomes, enhance compliance, and enable better use of healthcare-related data. However, critical in assessing whether blockchain can fulfill the hype of a technology characterized as ‘revolutionary’ and ‘disruptive’, is the need to ensure that blockchain design elements consider actual healthcare needs from the diverse perspectives of consumers, patients, providers, and regulators. In addition, answering the real needs of healthcare stakeholders, blockchain approaches must also be responsive to the unique challenges faced in healthcare compared to other sectors of the economy. In this sense, ensuring that a health blockchain is ‘fit-for-purpose’ is pivotal. This concept forms the basis for this article, where we share views from a multidisciplinary group of practitioners at the forefront of blockchain conceptualization, development, and deployment.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the enabling and constraining roles of blockchain technology (BCT) in managerial work practices and conceptualise the technology–performance relationship in supply chain management (SCM). Design/methodology/approach A structured literature review and a theory-driven approach are used. A set of propositions are developed, suggesting how the use of BCT in supply chains can be understood to simultaneously enable and constrain SCM and performance. Findings The analysis identifies four enabling and three constraining blockchain identities to explain how the technology either “facilitates” or “impedes” SCM and supply chain performance. Traceability, which emanates from its ability to provide data immutability, ranks highly as a core innovation of the technology. The blockchain is mainly seen as an opportunity to exploit existing supply chain resources and competencies. Research limitations/implications One limitation of the research is its conceptual nature. Future research should test the developed propositions empirically. Further research should focus on BCT as an opportunity to explore and as a relationship-building technology. More research is also needed focussing on the complex and simultaneous enabling and constraining effects of BCT in supply chains. Originality/value The paper shows the important and complex Janus-faced implications of embedding BCT in supply chains and demonstrates how organisational theory can be applied to explore the relationship between blockchain and SCM.
Ravikumar Ch, B. N. V. MadhuBabu, C. S. Sowjanya
et al.
Abstract The fast rate of adoption of cloud-integrated Internet of Things (IoT) environs poses critical problems to access control because of the resource restrictiveness, heterogeneity, and dynamism of IoT devices, making the traditional centralized security models not applicable. To overcome these shortcomings, this paper presents a blockchain-based distributed access control system CapBlock, which combines the ability-based access control (CapBAC), smart contracts, and machine learning (ML) to provide dynamic, scalable, and resistant security enforcement. The framework applies the Ensemble Cuckoo Search Optimization (ECSO) algorithm, Bloom filters and the public-key cryptography to optimize the usage of resources, reduce the latency associated with authorization and improve the scalability of the system, and the use of a Random Forest-based anomaly detection model is continuously used to monitor the behavior of users to access the system and dynamically update the access policies to prevent malicious activities. The system is tested on a large scale of simulation with 4,000 access transactions on metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, transaction latency, throughput, security of data and preservation of privacy. The user privacy protection rate is considered as the percentage of requests of access where sensitive user attributes are not disclosed during authentication, authorization, and blockchain transaction logging, where the average value is 93 percent. Moreover, the throughput is calculated by scaling loads of request-per-second in HTTP requests to blockchain transactions commits with the assumption of one validated request per one completed transaction, under which the proposed framework can reach the highest throughput of 1,200 transactions per second (TPS) with stable performance. The experimental findings support the notion that CapBlock is a highly secure system capable of promoting security resiliency, privacy protection, and scalable access control in the contemporary cloud-IoT systems.
Abstract Permissionless blockchain, as a kind of distributed ledger, has gained considerable attention because of its openness, transparency, decentralization, and immutability. Currently, permissionless blockchain has shown a good application prospect in many fields, from the initial cryptocurrency to the Internet of Things (IoT) and Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networking (VANET), which is considered as the beginning of rewriting our digital infrastructure. However, blockchain confronts some privacy risks that hinder its practical applications. Though numerous surveys reviewed the privacy preservation in blockchain, they failed to reveal the latest advances, nor have they been able to conduct a unified standard comprehensive classification of the privacy protection of permissionless blockchain. Therefore, in this paper, we analyze the specific characteristics of permissionless blockchain, summarize the potential privacy threats, and investigate the unique privacy requirements of blockchain. Existing privacy preservation technologies are carefully surveyed and evaluated based on our proposed evaluation criteria. We finally figure out open research issues as well as future research directions from the perspective of privacy issues.
Contemporarily, two emerging techniques, blockchain and edge computing, are driving a dramatical rapid growth in the field of Internet-of-Things (IoT). Benefits of applying edge computing is an adoptable complementarity for cloud computing; blockchain is an alternative for constructing transparent secure environment for data storage/governance. Instead of using these two techniques independently, in this article, we propose a novel approach that integrates IoT with edge computing and blockchain, which is called blockchain-based Internet of Edge model. The proposed model, designed for a scalable and controllable IoT system, sufficiently exploits advantages of edge computing and blockchain to establish a privacy-preserving mechanism while considering other constraints, such as energy cost. We implement experiment evaluations running on Ethereum. According to our data collections, the proposed model improves privacy protections without lowering down the performance in an energy-efficient manner.
Abstract This paper explores the barriers and drivers of diffusion associated with permissionless and permissioned blockchains, seeking to establish whether they are the same or different and whether barriers and drivers change over time. The study was undertaken in two stages: (i) interviews in 2016 that examine the barriers and drivers of diffusion; followed by (ii) a case study in 2019 of the Italian wine industry’s permissioned blockchain. The results show that diffusion is reaching a final stage for permissionless blockchains but is lagging behind for permissioned blockchains due to the different barriers and drivers of diffusion. The implications from this study are that: (i) drivers and barriers for different types of technological innovation may be different and change over time; (ii) initial barriers may be surmounted and become features of the underlying technology; (iii) barriers may become drivers of a technology; (iv) drivers of one type of technology may spill-over to become drivers for another type; (v) diffusion may be measured by both the number of adoptions and the number of participants in that technology; (vi) off-chain processes may become a major barrier for permissioned blockchains; and finally (vii) self-interest may be the key driver of technological innovation.
Abstract In contemporary era of technologies, blockchain has acquired tremendous attention from various domains. It has wide spectrum of applications ranging from finance to social services and has greatly influenced the emerging business world. Since, blockchain technology is getting embedded in the e-commerce services, the cryptocurrencies are gaining huge prevalence. Bitcoin and ethereum are few such crypto currencies, which have utilized decentralized nature of blockchain. Blockchain can be considered as a distributed database system containing immutable ledgers, which are prone to attack by malicious users. Although, from the initial digital currency to the present smart contract, the utilities of blockchain have been harnessed, the innovative technology has to rely on cryptography for its security. There are several reports, which emphases on the vulnerabilities and security of blockchain, however, there is a lack of a comprehensive and methodical survey in both application and technical views. In this survey article, the authors cover various aspects related to blockchain including its taxonomies and the situations in which a particular category of blockchain should be applied. The authors also focusses on the structure of blockchain and the working of the ongoing transactions in the cryptocurrency network. In addition, the authors also specify various categories of consensus protocols, smart contracts, forks, techniques for generating the consensus. A detailed taxonomy of blockchain along with their features and related real-world applications is also discussed. In addition, existing key platforms of blockchain related to the cryptocurrencies, hyperledger and multichain are also discussed. Existing emerging vulnerabilities of blockchain related to the recent attacks on bitcoin and etherum is also presented along with the defensive methodologies and future trends in blockchain.
Danson Kimani, Kweku Adams, Rexford Attah‐Boakye
et al.
Abstract Blockchain is one the most remarkable technological innovations of the 21st century. The most notable application of blockchain is in the development and operation of cryptocurrencies (e.g. bitcoin, ethereum, among others). Besides the financial services industry, blockchain is also considered in other sectors such as international trade, taxation, supply chain management, business operations and governance. However, blockchain has not been examined comprehensively in all areas of relevant literature. This article conducts a survey of the literature to gain an understanding of the opportunities and issues presented by blockchain in various business functions. The article begins by providing a discussion regarding how the blockchain technology operates. The paper takes a broad focus in its analysis of the prospects of blockchain for various business functions, including banking and the capital markets, corporate governance, international trade, and taxation. The paper demonstrates how organisations and regulators can leverage blockchain to upscale business operations, enhance efficiency and reduce operational costs. The key drawbacks of blockchain that stakeholders need to bear in mind before adopting the technology are also highlighted. The article also reflects on how organisations can tap into blockchain to reap the full potential of the fourth industrial revolution.
BackgroundBlockchain technology offers transformative potential for international intellectual property (IP) trade and protection, yet its adoption in China faces significant barriers.MethodThis study utilizes the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to quantitatively prioritize regulatory, technological, economic, and sociocultural barriers, drawing on data from expert interviews.FindingsThe analysis identifies regulatory barriers, particularly compliance costs (weight: 0.308) and data security regulations (0.168), as the primary challenges, largely due to stringent regulations such as China’s Cybersecurity Law. Technological barriers, including infrastructure limitations (0.198) and high implementation costs (0.132), are also significant. Economic and sociocultural barriers, such as awareness gaps and trust deficits, are less critical but still relevant. Addressing these challenges requires collaboration among policymakers, technology providers, and IP stakeholders.ConclusionThis research offers actionable insights for advancing blockchain integration in China’s IP ecosystem. Future studies should expand sample sizes and explore alternative decision-making frameworks to improve generalizability.
The research delves into the nexus between cryptocurrencies and touristic activity, with a special focus on the facet
of legal regulations. The study's objective is to fathom how cryptocurrencies influence the tourism sector, how legal standar ds
bear on transactions involving cryptocurrencies within the tourism industry, and to what extent they render the adoption of
cryptocurrencies in tourism feasible. The principal aim is to unravel the interconnection between the employment of
cryptocurrencies in tourist services and its concurrent legal governance in four handpicked countries: Spain, France, Croatia,
the Netherlands The investigation encompasses, on the one hand, the exploration of legal case studies and, on the other, the
evaluation of hypotheses using clustering neural networks to dissect the interrelation between cryptocurrencies and tourism.
Clustering was achieved through SOM and PCA methodologies, which, in unison, proffer profound insights into the data's
architecture and interconnectedness. The data was collected by scraping with an API key, allowing us to examine all
cryptocurrency acceptance points by category in each country. During this process, we employed a big data setup. The
research underscores that blockchain technologies, including but not limited to Ethereum's advancements that extend beyond
just Bitcoin, are steadily gaining a more influential role in tourism. Furthermore, legal guidelines, especially within the E U,
have a significant influence on transactions and operations associated with these digital assets. This becomes paramount as, in
the scrutinised region, the count of cryptocurrency and blockchain acceptance venues correlates with the vigour of tourism.
Blockchain technologies, which transcend just the realm of Bitcoin and encompass advances like Ethereum, are progressively
playing a pivotal role in tourism sector. Legal regulations emerge as a cardinal determinant in the governance of blockchain
and cryptocurrency-related transactions and operations. The interplay between tourism and these technologies calls for further
investigation, especially against the backdrop of a mutable legal environment. However, a conclusion can be drawn regarding
its multiplicative impact on the economic pulse of the tourism sector.
Scarce and niche in the literature just a few years ago, the blockchain topic is now the main subject in conference papers and books. However, the hype generated by the technology and its potential implications for real-world applications is flawed by many misconceptions about how it works and how it is implemented, creating faulty thinking or overly optimistic expectations. Too often, characteristics such as immutability, transparency, and censorship resistance, which mainly belong to the bitcoin blockchain, are sought in regular blockchains, whose potential is barely comparable. Furthermore, critical aspects such as oracles and their role in smart contracts receive few literature contributions, leaving results and theoretical implications highly questionable. This literature review of the latest papers in the field aims to give clarity to the blockchain oracle problem by discussing its effects in some of the most promising real-world applications. The analysis supports the view that the more trusted a system is, the less the oracle problem impacts.
Abstract This commentary explores how blockchain technology is being leveraged to improve marine conservation and fisheries supply chain management globally. In doing so, the paper considers the technical and political challenges of building trust and equity for various stakeholders. A blockchain is a smart electronic database, distributed to all users, immutably tracking every transaction that has ever taken place on the network. The blockchain is very difficult to hack, with no single point of authority to make mistakes and collapse the system. Automated consensus protocols enable data transmitted on the network to be verified and stored immutably, minimising the risk of data corruption to near-zero. Blockchain is being increasingly hyped for a range of services and industries, including transparent resourcing for marine conservation, reducing pollution from plastics, reducing slavery at sea, and sustainable fisheries management. Public distrust in some conservation operations, as well as in the provenance of seafood, is growing. Although some global marine conservation organisations and seafood producers have found practical solutions in disruptive technologies like blockchain, riding this wave will only prove worthwhile if coastal communities and artisanal fishers are on board and stand a chance of landing a fair share of the benefits.