InterPlanetary File System Research Articles

Transforming the Game Account Trading Market: An Ethereum Blockchain-Based Solution

Abstract: The primary risks associated with game account trading include the exposure of personal information and the potential for account retrieval. In a system leveraging blockchain technology, specifically Ethereum combined with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), personal and game-related information is kept confidential. This system ensures that only the respective users have access to their personal data on the blockchain. Furthermore, upon the completion of a trade, the information associated with the account can be altered once, enhancing security. Additionally, the landscape of video game trading, particularly in China, is evolving rapidly. With the growth and development of the video game industry in the region, it has become increasingly challenging to trade game accounts. This complexity is largely due to the emergence of various policies and regulations that aim to safeguard user data and maintain the integrity of game ecosystems. The blockchain-based system provides a more secure and efficient way of handling these transactions, mitigating risks associated with traditional trading methods. By employing decentralized technologies, this innovative approach ensures greater privacy, security, and compliance with regulatory standards, thus revolutionizing the realm of game account trading.

Secure Blockchain Assisted Attribute-Based Keyword Search for Collaborative E-Healthcare

In the age of technological advancement, collaborative E-healthcare emerges as a transformative system eliminating traditional location and accessibility barriers in healthcare services. Here, Searchable Encryption (SE) plays a key role in enabling healthcare providers to outsource encrypted medical data and search services to third parties like cloud servers, thereby reducing storage and management expenses. This intermediary approach poses challenges of single-point failure, privacy breaches, and potentially untrustworthy results. State-of-the-art public key-based SE methods use a cloud-assisted architecture that doesn’t support reliable and practical searches with fine-grained permissions. Also, such systems require additional support to address potential privacy leakages and ensure data availability at the storage server. To address these concerns, we propose a B lockchain-assisted E fficient and S ecure K eyword S earch (BESKS) scheme to enforce fine-grained keyword search privilege control while achieving practical search complexity. Our scheme employs a ciphertext policy attribute-based keyword search mechanism where keywords are encrypted using expressive access policies to build an inverted index structure. The encrypted indexes are stored on the blockchain while encrypted medical documents are stored on InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) nodes to enhance availability and ensure the reliability and scalability of our approach. Our scheme utilizes blockchain-based smart contract for efficient, secure search operations and ensures financial fairness in fine-grained searches. Search tokens are generated based on user attributes and query keywords to facilitate private searches on-chain. To enhance the search process, our secure index enables exact match for a query keyword in constant time to ensure expensive authorization operations are performed only once. Theoretical analysis suggests that our BESKS is more efficient and secure than state-of-the-art schemes. Prototype implementation results on the Ethereum blockchain network further validate its feasibility for real-world applications, demonstrating the scheme's practical applicability in collaborative E-Healthcare systems.

Blockchain Based Decentralized Storage Drive

The "Decentralized Storage Drive" project introduces a secure, blockchain-based platform for decentralized data storage and sharing. By integrating the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) for decentralized storage, the platform ensures that data remains immutable and resistant to censorship. Solidity smart contracts deployed on the Ethereum blockchain provide robust mechanisms for access control, allowing users to manage data ownership and permissions without relying on centralized authorities. A React-based front- end interface simplifies user interaction, enabling seamless data upload and access management. This project addresses critical issues related to data privacy, security, and ownership, offering a user-friendly solution that empowers individuals with greater control over their digital assets. Throughout the development of this project, a focus on security, user control, and decentralization has been paramount. The rigorous testing of smart contracts and the integration of secure authentication methods ensure that the platform is both reliable and resilient to potential threats. The "Decentralized Storage Drive" represents a significant advancement in the field of decentralized applications, demonstrating the practical application of blockchain technology in everyday data management. Key Words: Decentralized Storage, Blockchain Technology, IPFS(InterPlanetary File System), Smart Contracts, Data Integrity, Access Control

Blockchain‐IoT: A revolutionary model for secure data storage and fine‐grained access control in internet of things

AbstractWith the rapid expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud storage has emerged as one of the cornerstones of data management, facilitating ubiquitous access and seamless sharing of information. However, with the involvement of a third party, traditional cloud‐based storage systems are plagued by security and availability concerns, stemming from centralized control and management architectures. A novel blockchain‐IoT model that leverages blockchain technology and decentralized storage mechanisms to address these challenges is presented. The model combines the Ethereum blockchain, interplanetary file system, and attribute‐based encryption to ensure secure and resilient storage and sharing of IoT data. Through an in‐depth exploration of the system architecture and underlying mechanisms, it is demonstrated how the framework decouples storage functionality from resource‐constrained IoT devices, mitigating security risks associated with on‐device storage. In addition, data owners and users can easily exchange data with one another through the use of Ethereum smart contracts, fostering a collaborative environment and providing incentives for data sharing. Moreover, an incentive mechanism powered by the FileCoin cryptocurrency is introduced, which motivates and ensures data sharing transparency and integrity between stakeholders. Furthermore, in the proposed blockchain‐IoT model, the proof‐of‐authority system consensus algorithm has been replaced by a delegated proof‐of‐capacity system, which reduces transaction costs and energy consumption. Using the Rinkby Ethereum official testing network, the proposed model has been demonstrated to be feasible and economical, emphasizing its potential to redefine IoT data management.

NFTs for accessing, monetizing, and teleporting digital twins and digital artifacts in the metaverse

Digital twins and digital artifacts have become integral components of metaverse platforms, providing users with a rich, immersive, and interactive digital experience through the deployment of diverse digital twins and digital artifacts such as 3D avatars, images, and objects. To date, a significant challenge persists in the lack of practical mechanisms to enable seamless teleportation and cross-metaverse interoperability for these digital twins and digital artifacts. There is also a lack of trusted monetization methods that facilitate trading and leasing of digital twins and digital artifacts. To address these important challenges, this paper proposes a blockchain and Non-Fungible Token (NFT)-based solution that facilitates the integration and teleportation of these digital twins and digital artifacts by providing trusted metadata, verifying ownership, and ensuring the authenticity of digital creations in the virtual world. Key to our solution is the introduction of a bridging mechanism that enables cross-metaverse interoperability, allowing for the portable transfer of NFTs across decentralized metaverse platforms. In addition, our solution focuses on empowering original digital creators by enabling the monetization of their creations through the ownership management capabilities offered by NFTs. To reliably and securely store the metadata and content of tokenized digital twins and digital artifacts, we integrate into our solution the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized storage system. To demonstrate the feasibility of our solution, we have developed and deployed all necessary smart contracts that govern the main functionalities and interactions of the proposed system on the Ethereum Goerli Testnet. We present our proposed system architecture, accompanied by informative sequence diagrams, algorithms, and testing details. We discuss how our proposed solution attains the main objectives outlined in the paper. We evaluate our proposed solution in terms of cost and security. We have made the complete source code of our smart contracts publicly available on GitHub.

Design and implementation of a decentralized document management system

Digital document management systems (DMSs) can enhance organizational efficiency, security, and compliance, fostering collaboration and reducing operational costs, and are widely used for convenience and productivity. However, DMSs are vulnerable to security issues, such as unauthorized access, document forgery, and malicious insider activities. Traditional DMSs grant access permissions to individual users, which increases the risk of document leakage or manipulation when these permissions are misused. This article aims to design and implement a decentralized document management system (DDMS) that enhances the security and integrity of digital documents by decentralizing access permissions and using blockchain technology. The proposed DDMS encrypts digital documents using a symmetric key and then the key is divided and distributed among multiple users through Shamir’s secret sharing scheme. The encrypted documents are stored using the InterPlanetary file system (IPFS), ensuring integrity through content-based addressing. And blockchain-based smart contracts manage access permissions and document retrieval, ensuring access is only granted when a predefined number of participants agree. We implement our system using the Ethereum blockchain and IPFS and evaluated its performance against other types of DMSs. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed DDMS significantly enhances security and integrity compared to three types of DMSs. While the system introduces a reasonable performance overhead, particularly with larger documents, it effectively prevents unauthorized access and tampering. For instance, the proposed system incurs approximately 12 s (1.2%) overhead when handling an 8GB document compared to the P2 system, but ensures tamper-proof access control and document integrity. As a result, the proposed DDMS addresses the critical security vulnerabilities found in conventional DMSs by decentralizing document access and leveraging blockchain and decentralized storage. This approach offers a robust solution for secure, tamper-resistant document management, making it suitable for organizations requiring high levels of confidentiality and document integrity.

A secure interoperable method for electronic health records exchange on cross platform blockchain network

An Electronic Health Record (EHR) store essential and sensitive patient's medical information. Since health information is highly confidential data, it should be accessible with the consent of the patient. Blockchain based EHR management system offers improvised privacy and patient-centric approach. EHR management systems are available with multiple blockchain platforms. Generally, EHRs are maintained at several independent blockchain platforms. EHR management systems should be capable of securely exchange data on cross platform blockchain network. The interoperability in such blockchain platforms should facilitate seamless cross-chain interaction and information exchange. This article proposes a method that facilitates secure EHR exchange on Ethereum and Hyperledger fabric network using hepatitis dataset. The key contributions of the proposed method include:•Hash lock based interoperable cross-chain method for EHR exchange across Ethereum and Hyperledger fabric.•Additional security to the EHR is ensured by partitioning EHR as on-chain (blockchain platform) and off-chain InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)•Secure Password Authentication-Based Key Exchange (SPAKE) based session management for EHR exchange across two parties.The proposed patient centric method is validated to ensures the successful exchange of patient EHR across Ethereum and Hyperledger fabric.

Using the Ethereum Blockchain in the Internet of Things Network for IT Diagnostics

The article discusses the use of Ethereum blockchain technology in the Internet of Things (IoT) network for IT diagnostics of patients, which increases data security and user privacy. This integration is proving effective for storing and managing sensitive data of patients with neurological diseases. An integrated system architecture has been developed that combines the IoT network, the IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) file structure with the Ethereum blockchain to create a reliable data storage model. This system ensures efficient, secure and transparent data processing, optimizing the processes of data registration, authorization and verification. Using IPFS for decentralized file storage, along with the Ethereum blockchain to create tamper-proof medical records, provides increased efficiency, scalability and privacy. During the experiments, the process of creating and testing the system was implemented, including setting up the environment, connecting an IPFS node, programming Ethereum smart contracts, sampling voice data and storing their hashes.

Research on the decentralized application of blockchain technology in campus information security

In the digital information age, the traditional centralized storage model is vulnerable to security attacks, which leads to the spread of false information and difficulty in tracing. This study proposes a decentralized campus information security system using blockchain technology and builds a tamper-proof, traceable, and privacy-protected architecture through Ethereum and Inter Planetary File System (IPFS). The system uses zero-knowledge proof and homomorphic encryption technology to ensure privacy and uses IPFS as an off-chain storage mechanism to improve the scalability of the system and data access speed. Experimental results show that compared with traditional digital applications, the system performs well in ensuring the authenticity and security of information and effectively protects user privacy.

Ethereum blockchain for electronic health records: securing and streamlining patient management.

Electronic health records (EHRs) are increasingly replacing traditional paper-based medical records due to their speed, security, and ability to eliminate redundant data. However, challenges such as EHR interoperability and privacy concerns remain unresolved. Blockchain, a distributed ledger technology comprising connected, encrypted data blocks, presents a promising solution. This study explores how blockchain technology can revolutionize hospital EHR management. Our proposed solution securely transfers medical records between patients and doctors using the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and the Ethereum platform. Utilizing smart contracts automates data transfers, ensuring patient anonymity and reducing computational complexity while securely storing patient data on the network. Patient records are stored locally on the Ganache server, with the front end managed using HTML, CSS, ReactJS, and JavaScript, and the backend developed in Solidity. Blockchain technologies combined with Role- Based access control instead of attribute -based access control. The system's throughput increases linearly with the number of users and requests, enhancing the framework's efficiency and scalability. The minimum recorded latency is 14 ms.

Enhancing the Reliability of Academic Document Certification Systems with Blockchain and Large Language Models

Verifying the authenticity of documents, whether digital or physical, is a complex and crucial challenge faced by a variety of entities, including governments, regulators, financial institutions, educational establishments, and healthcare services. Rapid advances in technology have facilitated the creation of falsified or fraudulent documents, calling into question the credibility and authenticity of academic records. Most existing blockchain-based verification methods and systems focus primarily on verifying the integrity of a document, paying less attention to examining the authenticity of the document’s actual content before it is validated and registered in the system, thus opening loopholes for clever forgeries or falsifications. This paper details the design and implementation of a proof-of-concept system that combines GPT-3.5’s natural language processing prowess with the Ethereum blockchain and the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for storing and verifying documents. It explains how a Large Language Model like GPT-3.5 extracts essential information from academic documents and encrypts it before storing it in the blockchain ensuring document integrity and authenticity. The system is tested for its efficiency in handling both digital and physical documents, demonstrating increased security and reliability in academic document verification.

Blockchain-based security-minded information-sharing in precast construction supply chain management with scalability, efficiency and privacy improvements

Blockchain and Interplanetary File System (IPFS) integration holds great promise for enhancing transparency and traceability in precast construction supply chain management (PCSCM). However, such integration faces challenges regarding unauthorized access to confidential data, which can lead to significant consequences, such as financial losses and legal issues. Regarding this gap, this paper proposes a hybrid privacy-preserving access control mechanism for securing blockchain-IPFS information-sharing in PCSCM with confidentiality considerations. Multiple privacy-preserving techniques (e.g., information-sharing channels, symmetric and asymmetric encryption, and lightweight proxy re-encryption) are leveraged. A prototype system demonstrates its feasibility and effectiveness, achieving demonstrably low network latency (millisecond level), efficient encryption (millisecond level), and robust data security within both blockchain and IPFS. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of blockchain-IPFS integration and provides a valuable reference point for future research and practical adoption.

A novel blockchain-watermarking mechanism utilizing interplanetary file system and fast walsh hadamard transform

This article proposes a new digital watermarking mechanism based on the Ethereum blockchain, Smart Contract, and Interplanetary File System (IPFS), with an enhanced Fast Walsh Hadamard Transform (FWHT) algorithm for watermark embedding and extraction. The proposed scheme aims to address the limitations of existing digital watermarking techniques, such as dependence on third-party platforms, by leveraging the decentralization feature of blockchain. The Smart Contract is used to manage the transaction between the parties involved in the watermarking process, while IPFS is used to store the watermark data. The enhanced FWHT algorithm is used to embed the watermark into the host image without affecting its visual quality. The results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of both imperceptibility and robustness. Additionally, it demonstrates that our scheme can effectively resist various attacks. Therefore, our scheme can be a promising solution for image copyright protection, authentication applications, and image trading.

A Two-Phase Blockchain-Enabled Framework for Securing Internet of Medical Things Systems

The healthcare industry has witnessed a transformative impact due to recent advancements in sensing technology, coupled with the Internet of Medical Things (IoMTs)-based healthcare systems. Remote monitoring and informed decision-making have become possible by leveraging an integrated platform for efficient data analysis and processing, thereby optimizing data management in healthcare. However, this data is collected, processed, and transmitted across an interconnected network of devices, which introduces notable security risks and escalates the potential for vulnerabilities throughout the entire data processing pipeline. Traditional security approaches rely on computational complexity and face challenges in adequately securing sensitive healthcare data against evolving threats, thus necessitating robust solutions that ensure trust, enhance security, and maintain data confidentiality and integrity. To address these challenges, this paper introduces a two-phase framework that integrates blockchain technology with IoMT to enhance trust computation, resulting in a secure cluster that supports the quality-of-service (QoS) for sensitive data. The first phase utilizes the decentralized interplanetary file system and hashing functions to create a smart contract for device registration, establishing a resilient storage platform that encrypts data, improves fault tolerance, and facilitates data access. In the second phase, communication overhead is optimized by considering power levels, communication ranges, and computing capabilities alongside the smart contract. The smart contract evaluates the trust index and QoS of each node to facilitate device clustering based on processing capabilities. We implemented the proposed framework using OMNeT++ simulator and C++ programming language and evaluated against the cutting-edge IoMT security approaches in terms of attack detection, energy consumption, packet delivery ratio, throughput, and latency. The qualitative results demonstrated that the proposed framework enhanced attack detection by 6.00%, 18.00%, 20.00%, and 27.00%, reduced energy consumption by 6.91%, 8.19%, 12.07%, and 17.94%, improved packet delivery ratio by 3.00%, 6.00%, 9.00%, and 10.00%, increased throughput by 7.00%, 8.00%, 11.00%, and 13.00%, and decreased latency by 4.90%, 8.81%, 11.54%, and 20.63%, against state-of-the-art methods and was supported by statistical analysis.

Blockchain with secure data transactions and energy trading model over the internet of electric vehicles

The rise of Electric Vehicles (EVs) has introduced significant advancement and evolution in the electricity market. In smart transportation, the EVs have earned more popularity because of its numerous benefits including lower carbon footprints, higher performance, and sophisticated energy trading mechanisms. These potential benefits have resulted in widespread EV adoption across the world. Despite its benefits, energy management remains the biggest challenge in EVs and it is mainly because of the lack of Charging Stations (CSs) near EVs. This creates a demand for an effective, secure and reliable energy management framework for EVs. This study presents a secure data and energy trade paradigm based on Blockchain (BC) in the Internet of EVs (IoEV). BC technology prepares for the high volume of EV integration that serves as the foundation for the next generation, and to assist in developing unique privacy-protected BC-based D-Trading and storage Models. Entities evaluated for the proposed model include Trusted Authority (TA), Vehicles, Smart Meters, Roadside Units (RSU), BC, and Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS). In addition, E-trading involves several phases, including the acquiring E-trading demand requests, E-trading response requests, request matching and token assignment. Moreover, account mapping is performed using a Mayfly Pelican Optimization Algorithm (MPOA), which is created by merging the Mayfly Algorithm (MA) and Pelican Optimization Algorithm (POA). Various security features are used to protect data and energy trade in IoEV, including encryption, hashing, polynomials, and others. The testing results revealed that the MPOA outperformed the state-of-the-art results regarding memory consumption, trading rate, transaction cost, and trading energy volume with values of 4.605 MB, 91%, 0.654, and 90 kW, respectively.

Decentralized Incident Reporting: Mobilizing Urban Communities with Blockchain

This paper introduces an innovative response to the pressing challenge of rapid and effective incident detection and management in urban settings. The proposed solution is a decentralized incident reporting system (IRS) harnessing blockchain technology and decentralized data storage systems. By empowering residents to report incidents, the proposed IRS enables seamless real-time monitoring and intervention by relevant departments. Built on a blockchain foundation, the proposed solution ensures immutability, transparency, security, and auditability, enhancing data resilience and comprehensive applicability. The proposed system leverages the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for the storage of incident proofs to manage the blockchain size effectively. Through the proposed IRS, transparency is upheld, enabling complete auditability of incident details and required interventions by citizens, societal bodies, and governmental bodies. Moreover, an incentive model is introduced to encourage active participation in incident reporting, thereby enhancing the system’s overall effectiveness and long-term sustainability. The proposed IRS integrates mobile technology to facilitate user engagement and data submission, essential for urban emergency management. Empirical validation using the Quorum–Raft blockchain demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed approach in terms of system throughput, incident reporting delay, blockchain size, and deployment cost. Specifically, the system maintains a latency of under 15 s even at high transaction rates, can handle up to 200 incidents per second, and is cost-effective, with deployment estimates for 16 organizations over five years being under 1.99 million USD. The method involves extensive testing with simulated incidents and user interactions to ensure robustness and scalability, showcasing the system’s potential for effective emergency management in urban environments.

Blockchain-enabled transparent traffic enforcement for sustainable road safety in cities

With the progress of the times, cars have become an important means of transportation in our lives. However, with new cars of all kinds, road safety issues still cannot be effectively improved. While countries have responded by enforcing traffic laws and using electronic technology to enhance enforcement, challenges still need to be addressed, including blurred images and misjudgments by police agencies, and even exploiting loopholes in traffic enforcement frameworks to evade consequences through bribery or connections. exacerbating an accident and leaving victims and families in the lurch of the aftermath. To solve this problem, we proposed a data traceability law enforcement system based on blockchain and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). The system ensures rapid traceability and protects law enforcement data from external attacks. The goal of leveraging blockchain’s decentralized nature and smart contracts is to instill accountability and fairness in road safety measures, mitigate the effects of corruption, and pave the way for a safer and more just transportation environment. Our experimental results show that under our stress test of 50 transactions per second, the throughput can be as high as 300 and the maximum delay can reach 2.01s, which is enough to experimentally prove that our system is feasible. Our approach is designed to solve the data corruption problem caused by the centralized server being paralyzed. It applies to all technology enforcement, with high flexibility and scalability for all participants to join or set privileges. we also provide an automated traffic law enforcement system in a smart city. To make the data storage more secure and fair, and not easily damaged by malicious people or tampered with by intentional attackers. This brings a breakthrough to the country’s program security.

Blockchain-Based Model for Incentivized Cyber Threat Intelligence Sharing

Sharing cyber threat intelligence (CTI) can significantly improve the security of information technology (IT) in organizations. However, stakeholders and practitioners are not keen on sharing CTI data due to the risk of exposing their private data and possibly losing value as an organization on the market. We present a model for CTI data sharing that maintains trust and confidentiality and incentivizes the sharing process. The novelty of the proposed model is that it combines two incentive mechanisms: money and reputation. The reputation incentive is important for ensuring trust in the shared CTI data. The monetary incentive is important for motivating the sharing and consumption of CTI data. The incentives are based on a subscription fee and a reward score for activities performed by a user. User activities are considered in the following three fields: producing CTI data, consuming CTI data, and reviewing CTI data. Each instance of user activity is rewarded with a score, and this score generates some value for reputation. An algorithm is proposed for assigning reward scores and for recording the accumulated reputation of the user. This model is implemented on the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain and the Interplanetary File System for storing data off-chain. The implemented prototype demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed model. The provided simulation shows that the selected values and the proposed algorithm used to calculate the reward scores are in accordance with economic laws.

Design and Analysis of Cybersecurity Information Sharing Mechanism Between Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRT) in Indonesia on Blockchain Technology Through Hyperledger Composer and Interplanetary File System (IPFS)

Sharing cybersecurity information among the Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) is a crucial step in enhancing organizational cybersecurity. However, a primary challenge faced is the lack of trust among users regarding the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of shared information. This study proposes a new approach by designing a mechanism for sharing cybersecurity information among CSIRTs in Indonesia on blockchain technology using Hyperledger Composer. This approach offers an innovative solution by leveraging the advantages of blockchain technology. Through this approach, cybersecurity information can be shared in a decentralized manner, overcoming the weaknesses of centralized systems, and enhancing overall information security. Another advantage of blockchain technology is its high performance and scalability, enabling increased speed, and user capacity in the process of sharing information. By implementing a blockchain-based mechanism for sharing cybersecurity information, this research aims to ensure crucial aspects of information security, namely confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The contribution of this study is not only in enhancing organizational cybersecurity but also in providing an innovative solution to practical challenges in sharing cybersecurity information among CSIRTs.

Secure Processing and Distribution of Data Managed on Private InterPlanetary File System Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs

In this study, a new data-sharing method is proposed that uses a private InterPlanetary File System—a decentralized storage system operated within a closed network—to distribute data to external entities while making its authenticity verifiable. Among the two operational modes of IPFS, public and private, this study focuses on the method for using private IPFS. Private IPFS is not open to the general public; although it poses a risk of data tampering when distributing data to external parties, the proposed method ensures the authenticity of the received data. In particular, this method applies a type of zero-knowledge proof, namely, the Groth16 protocol of zk-SNARKs, to ensure that the data corresponds to the content identifier in a private IPFS. Moreover, the recipient’s name is embedded into the distributed data to prevent unauthorized secondary distribution. Experiments confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method for an image data size of up to 120 × 120 pixels. In future studies, the proposed method will be applied to larger and more diverse data types.