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.
Food traceability has been one of the emerging blockchain applications in recent years, for improving the areas of anti-counterfeiting and quality assurance. Existing food traceability systems do not guarantee a high level of system reliability, scalability, and information accuracy. Moreover, the traceability process is time-consuming and complicated in modern supply chain networks. To alleviate these concerns, blockchain technology is promising to create a new ontology for supply chain traceability. However, most consensus mechanisms and data flow in blockchain are developed for cryptocurrency, not for supply chain traceability; hence, simply applying blockchain technology to food traceability is impractical. In this paper, a blockchain–IoT-based food traceability system (BIFTS) is proposed to integrate the novel deployment of blockchain, IoT technology, and fuzzy logic into a total traceability shelf life management system for managing perishable food. To address the needs for food traceability, lightweight and vaporized characteristics are deployed in the blockchain, while an integrated consensus mechanism that considers shipment transit time, stakeholder assessment, and shipment volume is developed. The data flow of blockchain is then aligned to the deployment of IoT technologies according to the level of traceable resource units. Subsequently, the decision support can be established in the food supply chain by using reliable and accurate data for shelf life adjustment, and by using fuzzy logic for quality decay evaluation.
Abstract The future of energy is complex, with fluctuating renewable resources in increasingly distributed systems. It is suggested that blockchain technology is a timely innovation with potential to facilitate this future. Peer-to-peer (P2P) microgrids can support renewable energy as well as economically empower consumers and prosumers. However, the rapid development of blockchain and prospects for P2P energy networks is coupled with several grey areas in the institutional landscape. The purpose of this paper is to holistically explore potential challenges of blockchain-based P2P microgrids, and propose practical implications for institutional development as well as academia. An analytical framework for P2P microgrids is developed based on literature review as well as expert interviews. The framework incorporates 1) Technological, 2) Economic, 3) Social, 4) Environmental and 5) Institutional dimensions. Directions for future work in practical and academic contexts are identified. It is suggested that bridging the gap from technological to institutional readiness would require the incorporation of all dimensions as well as their inter-relatedness. Gradual institutional change leveraging community-building and regulatory sandbox approaches are proposed as potential pathways in incorporating this multi-dimensionality, reducing cross-sectoral silos, and facilitating interoperability between current and future systems. By offering insight through holistic conceptualization, this paper aims to contribute to expanding research in building the pillars of a more substantiated institutional arch for blockchain in the energy sector.
Traceability and integrity are major challenges for the increasingly complex supply chains of today's world. Although blockchain technology has the potential to address these challenges through providing a tamper-proof audit trail of supply chain events and data associated with a product life-cycle, it does not solve the trust problem associated with the data itself. Reputation systems are an effective approach to solve this trust problem. However, current reputation systems are not suited to the blockchain based supply chain applications as they are based on limited observations, they lack granularity and automation, and their overhead has not been explored. In this work, we propose TrustChain, as a three-layered trust management framework which uses a consortium blockchain to track interactions among supply chain participants and to dynamically assign trust and reputation scores based on these interactions. The novelty of Trustchain stems from: (a) the reputation model that evaluates the quality of commodities, and the trustworthiness of entities based on multiple observations of supply chain events, (b) its support for reputation scores that separate between a supply chain participant and products, enabling the assignment of product-specific reputations for the same participant, (c) the use of smart contracts for transparent, efficient, secure, and automated calculation of reputation scores, and (d) its minimal overhead in terms of latency and throughput when compared to a simple blockchain based supply chain model.
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 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.
E-governance depends on the secure exchange of digital documents, with PDFs widely used for official communication. However, threats such as shadow attacks and policy tampering undermine integrity and trust. This paper proposes a blockchain-based framework that secures PDF workflows by recording complete document hashes and metadata on an immutable ledger. By integrating Policy-based Governance infrastructure, the system strengthens digital signature verification and resists tampering, even under Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) conditions. Evaluation on 1,000 official PDFs shows that the proposed framework achieves 93.1% detection of shadow attacks with 98.4% precision and only 1.6% false positives, compared to traditional PKI methods that failed to detect any tampering. The approach maintains efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, providing a resilient foundation for secure, transparent, and trustworthy e-governance services.
In recent years, the term Metaverse emerged as one of the most compelling concepts, captivating the interest of international companies such as Tencent, ByteDance, Microsoft, and Facebook. These company recognized the Metaverse as a pivotal element for future success and have since made significant investments in this area. The Metaverse is still in its developmental stages, requiring the integration and advancement of various technologies to bring its vision to life. One of the key technologies associated with the Metaverse is blockchain, known for its decentralization, security, trustworthiness, and ability to manage time-series data. These characteristics align perfectly with the ecosystem of the Metaverse, making blockchain foundational for its security and infrastructure. This paper introduces both blockchain and the Metaverse ecosystem while exploring the application of the blockchain within the Metaverse, including decentralization, consensus mechanisms, hash algorithms, timestamping, smart contracts, distributed storage, distributed ledgers, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to provide insights for researchers investigating these topics.
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.