Issues Of Blockchain Research Articles

Secure multiparty computation protocol based on homomorphic encryption and its application in blockchain

Blockchain technology is a key technology in the current information field and has been widely used in various industries. Blockchain technology faces significant challenges in privacy protection while ensuring data immutability and transparency, so it is crucial to implement private computing in blockchain. To target the privacy issues in blockchain, we design a secure multi-party computation (SMPC) protocol DHSMPC based on homomorphic encryption in this paper. On the one hand, homomorphic encryption technology can directly operate on ciphertext, solving the privacy problem in the blockchain. On the other hand, this paper designs the directed decryption function of DHSMPC to resist malicious opponents in the CRS model, so that authorized users who do not participate in the calculation can also access the decryption results of secure multi-party computation. Analytical and experimental results show that DHSMPC has smaller ciphertext size and stronger performance than existing SMPC protocols. The protocol makes it possible to implement complex calculations in multi-party scenarios and is proven to be resistant to various semi-malicious attacks, ensuring data security and privacy. Finally, this article combines the designed DHSMPC protocol with blockchain and cloud computing, showing how to use this solution to achieve trusted data management in specific scenarios.

Enhancing cybersecurity in smart grids: Deep black box adversarial attacks and quantum voting ensemble models for blockchain privacy-preserving storage

Smart grids are getting important in today’s power management, so with that, smart grid technologies are increasingly important too. There have been a lot of concerns about smart grid technologies being hacked, and as a result, some deep black box adversarial attacks have been conducted and presented. We propose a new experimental methodology for benchmarking smart grid security with black box attacks. Additionally, concerning the type of smart grids, Smart Power Grids, deep black box adversarial attacks which can be crafted using virtually no knowledge about the target due to the inherent complexity of content available in cryptographic libraries like SecLib or Bouncy Castle how it affects security of cyber-physical power systems. We identify potential impacts of deep black box attacks on Smart Power Grids as implemented by the Department of Energy in 1996, we evaluate existing protection methods, and we find out the pitfalls thereof. With the aim of overcoming the aforementioned drawbacks, we initiate a study on deep black box adversarial attacks against Smart Power Grids showing that statistically significant effects against a national Smart Power Grid are achievable with absolute security. We also probe detection of cyber security attacks on Smart Power Grids. We illustrate landscape of smart grids with numerous cyber threats and demonstrate the limitations of traditional security practices. We show the importance of machine learning to detect attacks and the unlikelihood of identification of dependable and efficient detection schemes. We describe quantum voting ensemble models as one of the most powerful techniques in the detection of cyber security attacks. Finally, we propose an experimental setup and evaluation criteria to detect cyber security attacks in smart grids using quantum voting ensemble models. Then, we talk about private data storage in blockchain based smart grid infrastructure. We give an introduction of block chain and its essentiality in smart grids. We discuss privacy issues in block chain based smart grids. We acknowledge the strength of privacy safeguards, but on the same wavelength, we realize their weaknesses. Next, we propose a quantum resistant encryption technique that enhances the privacy of smart grids. We propose quantum voting ensemble models as one of the most promising techniques to address the issue of private data storage in block chains. As a result, we provide a comparison between the proposed models and traditional approaches to privacy protection in smart grids based on an experimental performance review. Then, we propose a unified strategy to improve smart grid cyber security by incorporating deep black box attacks with quantum voting ensemble models. Finally, we disclose several benefits of such integration and perform an experimental evaluation to investigate the effectiveness of the unified approach. The results of our study identify security gaps in smart grids and propose state-of-the-art mechanisms to address them. The challenges of smart grids system require the amalgamation of blockchain, quantum voting ensemble models and deep black box adversarial attacks. We achieve this objective proposing a unified strategy. The results of this study will equally be helpful for future research and smart grid cyber security implementations.

Factors Influencing Blockchain Technologies Adoption in Supply Chain Management and Logistic Sectors: Cultural Compatibility of Blockchain Solutions as Moderator

The rapid advancements in blockchain technology have heralded a new era for various industries, including the supply chain and logistics. However, despite the promising opportunities, the adoption of blockchain within supply chain and logistics still needs to be explored, especially in Saudi Arabia. This study investigated the impact of technological, organizational, and environmental factors on blockchain adoption among Saudi supply chain and logistics companies. The study also tested cultural compatibility’s moderating role in solving blockchain issues. A quantitative method approach was employed, utilizing a survey questionnaire. Data were gathered from various stakeholders across the industry, including managers, IT experts, and logistics professionals. The findings indicate that relative advantage, top management support, and competitors influence blockchain technology adoption significantly and positively. However, openness to innovation use has an insignificant effect on adoption. Government support demonstrates the strongest positive influence on blockchain adoption, whereas vendor orientation and support showed an insignificant impact. Both blockchain technology adoption and the cultural compatibility of blockchain solutions significantly enhance operational excellence, but the moderating effect of cultural compatibility of blockchain solutions shows no effect on operational excellence. This study stands out as one of the first explorations into blockchain adoption in the supply chain and logistics sector within the Saudi context, identifying the factors contributing to blockchain’s successful implementation for operational excellence.

Security and privacy issues in blockchain and its applications

Security and privacy issues in blockchain and its applications

Review Study: Blockchain Application in Payroll System

In this era, where business execution is primarily reliant on information, the sooner and more precisely it is received, the better. Blockchain is great for information sharing because it provides instant, shareable, and entirely transparent data kept in an immutable ledger that only network users with permission may access. On the blockchain network, virtually any asset may be recorded and exchanged, reducing risk and expense for all parties involved. This research focuses on blockchain payroll implementation. It is critical to employ the proper tactics to preserve and improve payroll, as blockchain technology is critical for securing the payroll system because it can move both value and information. This review paper's main point is that blockchain technology can be used to reduce overhead and administrative burden, reduce tax spending, and promote openness and accountability in a variety of situations. Blockchain challenges to the payroll system and implementation issues have been highlighted. Given the quantity and complexity of blockchain issues, many of the most significant blockchain roadblocks are characteristic of any new technology's growing pains. The benefits and challenges of using blockchain technology in payroll procedures were discussed after the study. It was determined that doing so would make all employee records and employer payments matching instantly available at the minute level to various governmental organizations. At a fraction of the cost of current payroll compliance utilizing a fiat cryptocurrency, a blockchain payroll application will provide quick payroll compliance. A blockchain framework that is approved for use with payroll systems and is encrypted using the high-efficiency encryption algorithm to ensure its high security will need to be designed and evaluated.

Security challenges and defense approaches for blockchain-based services from a full-stack architecture perspective

As an advantageous technique and service, the blockchain has shown great development and application prospects. However, its security has also met great challenges, and many security vulnerabilities and attack issues in blockchain-based services have emerged. Recently, security issues of blockchain have attracted extensive attention. However, there is still a lack of blockchain security research from a full-stack architecture perspective, as well as representative quantitative experimental reproduction and analysis. We aim to provide a security architecture to solve security risks in blockchain services from a full-stack architecture perspective. Meanwhile, we propose a formal definition of the full-stack security architecture for blockchain-based services, and we also propose a formal expression of security issues and defense solutions from a full-stack security perspective. We use ConCert to conduct a smart contract formal verification experiment by property-based testing. The security vulnerabilities of blockchain services in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) and China Nation Vulnerability Database (CNVD) are selected and enumerated. Additionally, three real contract-layer real attack events are reproduced by an experimental approach. Using Alibaba's blockchain services and Identity Mixer in Hyperledger Fabric as a case study, the security problems and defense techniques are analyzed and researched. At last, the future research directions are proposed.

Models used to characterise blockchain features. A systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis

Blockchain has emerged as an innovative technology with potential to transform business management, through operational efficiency improvements. Nevertheless, several performance and vulnerability issues have been identified for the different typologies supporting the wide range of blockchain-based applications currently implemented in different domains.A variety of analytical and empirical models are being used to evaluate the issues associated with the different blockchain typologies, enabling systematic analyses of the corresponding efficiency impact, and technical or economic threats.A thorough systematic literature review of these models has been performed, followed by a detailed assessment on the way these models have been employed, and the target parameters and applications evaluated (336 research selected and analysed). We propose a co-classification of these models, allowing us to identify which ones are employed to a greater extent to address the different blockchain issues in scientific research. In a second step, a bibliometric analysis on the selected research is conducted, offering a complementary overview of the status of and trends in blockchain modelling, including the most prolific authors and leading contributing countries to the topic.The main outcome and contribution of the paper is the provision of a broad overview on how blockchain issues have been analytically tackled, through the synthesis and meta-analysis of the models used in the scientific literature since the inception of blockchain technology. The results have two main direct applications, firstly supporting novel vulnerability and performance analyses of existing blockchain applications by providing historical information on the models used so far, as well as the key parameters and typology of the blockchain-based applications evaluated. Secondly, in the implementation of new applications, by allowing the recognition of key issues identified that are associated with the different blockchain typologies and to determine the most suitable models to analyse the weaknesses and risks of the alternative designs under evaluation for these new implementations.

Sustainability in Blockchain: A Systematic Literature Review on Scalability and Power Consumption Issues

Blockchain is a peer-to-peer trustless network that keeps records of digital assets without any central authority. With the passage of time, the sustainability issue of blockchain is rising. This paper discusses two major sustainability issues of blockchain: power consumption and scalability. It discusses the challenge of power consumption by analyzing various approaches to estimating power consumption in the literature. A case study of bitcoin is presented for this purpose. The study presents a review of the growing energy consumption of bitcoin along with a solution for immersion cooling in blockchain mining. The second challenge addressed in this research is scalability. With the increase in network size, scalability issues are also increasing as the number of transactions per second is decreasing. In other words, blockchain is observing low throughput with its increase in size. The paper discusses research studies and techniques proposed in the literature. The paper then investigates how to scale blockchain for better performance.

Blockchain Technology: Security Issues, Healthcare Applications, Challenges and Future Trends

Blockchain technology provides a data structure with inherent security properties that include cryptography, decentralization, and consensus, which ensure trust in transactions. It covers widely applicable usages, such as in intelligent manufacturing, finance, the Internet of things (IoT), medicine and health, and many different areas, especially in medical health data security and privacy protection areas. Its natural attributes, such as contracts and consensus mechanisms, have leading-edge advantages in protecting data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The security issues are gradually revealed with in-depth research and vigorous development. Unlike traditional paper storage methods, modern medical records are stored electronically. Blockchain technology provided a decentralized solution to the trust-less issues between distrusting parties without third-party guarantees, but the “trust-less” security through technology was easily misunderstood and hindered the security differences between public and private blockchains appropriately. The mentioned advantages and disadvantages motivated us to provide an advancement and comprehensive study regarding the applicability of blockchain technology. This paper focuses on the healthcare security issues in blockchain and sorts out the security risks in six layers of blockchain technology by comparing and analyzing existing security measures. It also explores and defines the different security attacks and challenges when applying blockchain technology, which promotes theoretical research and robust security protocol development in the current and future distributed work environment.

Blockchain Integration for IoT-Enabled V2X Communications: A Comprehensive Survey, Security Issues and Challenges

In V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communication, there is a two-way communication among the vehicle(s) and other Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled smart devices around it that may change how we need to drive. Due to the advancement of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and the rapid development of IoT in transportation, traditional applications are converted to intelligent applications. In V2X communications, the collected information from the IoT smart devices and other sources passes through low-latency, high-bandwidth, high-reliability links. With the future adoption of the 5th generation mobile network (5G) and beyond networks, V2X continues to produce a huge volume of data. However, collecting and storing data securely in blockchain-based storage are extremely needed for immutability and transparency. In this survey article, the convergence of IoT, V2X and blockchain technologies, and various security challenges and their countermeasures are discussed. Next, we discuss various V2X applications and their respective services. Moreover, IoT-V2X architecture and its enabling technologies are discussed in this article. In addition, we also provide a comprehensive analysis of various security mechanisms. Finally, we provide some important challenges and issues of Blockchain for Intelligent Transportation System (BITS).

Blockchain Cryptography and Security Issues

Transaction records and other user information are stored in blocks that form a distributed ledger called blockchain. For blockchain to gain widespread adoption, it is crucial that user and transaction data be kept safe. This technology provides cryptographically safe and anonymous financial transactions among the user nodes of the network allowing the transactions to be evaluated and authorized by all the users in a transparent environment. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview and classification scheme for all cryptographic ideas currently used in blockchain. Moreover, the current security issues of blockchain are shown, and a future research objective is predicted.

Recent Advances of Blockchain and Its Applications

Blockchain is an emerging decentralized data collection, sharing, and storage technology, which have provided abundant transparent, secure, tamper-proof, secure, and robust ledger services for various real-world use cases. Recent years have witnessed notable developments of blockchain technology itself as well as blockchain-enabled applications. Most existing surveys limit the scopes on several particular issues of blockchain or applications, which are hard to depict the general picture of current giant blockchain ecosystem. In this paper, we investigate recent advances of both blockchain technology and its most active research topics in real-world applications. We first review the recent developments of consensus and storage mechanisms and communication schema in general blockchain systems. Then extensive literature review is conducted on blockchain-enabled Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, federated learning, and several emerging applications including healthcare, COVID-19 pandemic, online social network, and supply chain, where detailed specific research topics are discussed in each. Finally, we discuss the future directions, challenges, and opportunities in both academia and industry.

A Framework to Overcome Blockchain Enabled Sustainable Manufacturing Issues through Circular Economy and Industry 4.0 Measures

Adoption of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and sustainable manufacturing practices plays an important role for manufacturing industries to sustain their globe market reputation. However, the adoption of I4.0 technologies in manufacturing practices is more concern for manufacturing industries. Volatile customer demands, changing manufacturing trends and market scenario has forced manufacturing organization to revisit their production system and incorporate sustainability practices. Blockchain enabled practices helps to maintain transparency and traceability in supply chain as well as manufacturing activities. But lack of framework related to blockchain enabled sustainable manufacturing has become a serious concern for policymakers and practitioners. Similarly, due to changing market scenario it is important to identify the solutions to overcome the blockchain enabled sustainable manufacturing issues through circular economy and I4.0 solution measures. The present study identifies the 28 critical challenges and 22 I4.0 and circular economy based solution measures to overcome the issues of blockchain enabled sustainable manufacturing. Further, a case study in electronics manufacturing industries is used to test the developed framework using hybrid multi-criteria decision making approach. The case study findings that organizational and managerial challenges are critical to blockchain enabled sustainable manufacturing adoption. In the end of study, we have proposed an integrated framework for blockchain enabled sustainable manufacturing practices for energy, waste, resource, quality and life cycle management. It is expected that present study will be helpful for the researchers, practitioners and policymakers to understand the complications in the adoption of blockchain enabled sustainable manufacturing practices.

A blockchain‐based approach to secure electronic health records using fuzzy commitment scheme

AbstractThe electronic health record is the most sensitive data which needs a secure framework to protect it from data breaching. Recently, blockchain‐based platforms are used in healthcare services for data security, data sharing and availability of immutable data during medico‐legal verification. In this paper, a blockchain‐based approach for securing electronic health records using elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and a biometric‐based fuzzy commitment scheme is proposed. The proposed approach addresses common issues of blockchain, namely scalability, integrity, confidentiality and decentralization of the ledger. The security of the proposed scheme was verified using the Random Oracle model. The block time for a variable number of transactions per block was measured and compared with the block time of the existing approaches. Also, the proposed approach was compared with the existing approaches with reference to various security features.

Post-Quantum Two-Party Adaptor Signature Based on Coding Theory

An adaptor signature can be viewed as a signature concealed with a secret value and, by design, any two of the trio yield the other. In a multiparty setting, an initial adaptor signature allows each party to create additional adaptor signatures without the original secret. Adaptor signatures help address scalability and interoperability issues in blockchain. They can also bring some important advantages to cryptocurrencies, such as low on-chain cost, improved transaction fungibility, and fewer limitations of a blockchain’s scripting language. In this paper, we propose a new two-party adaptor signature scheme that relies on quantum-safe hard problems in coding theory. The proposed scheme uses a hash-and-sign code-based signature scheme introduced by Debris-Alazard et al. and a code-based hard relation defined from the well-known syndrome decoding problem. To achieve all the basic properties of adaptor signatures formalized by Aumayr et al., we introduce further modifications to the aforementioned signature scheme. We also give a security analysis of our scheme and its application to the atomic swap. After providing a set of parameters for our scheme, we show that it has the smallest pre-signature size compared to existing post-quantum adaptor signatures.

Going beyond Cryptocurrencies: The Social Representation of Blockchain

This study investigates the social representation of Blockchain from the perspective of professionals in Brazil, herein considered as a proxy for emerging markets, and then compares the results found with the existing academic literature on the concept of Blockchain. To do that, the social representation theory was applied, operationalized through the words evocation technique. Security, bitcoin and decentralization were the categories located in the central nucleus of the social representation of Blockchain, while innovation, data, network, cryptocurrency, and technology were the categories located in the peripheral system. Based on the results obtained, there was a perceived strong association of Blockchain with bitcoin, one of its applications, and a dissonance between the existing academic literature and the perception of Brazilian professionals about the concept of Blockchain, as the latter is a privilege of the technical and operational issues of Blockchain to the detriment of its strategic potential. This dissonance can cause Blockchain initiatives to have results below expectations. Finally, Brazilian professionals did not realize the potential for inclusion of Blockchain in an emerging market such as Brazil and did not notice the need and relevance of a specific legal governance for Blockchain, an issue also forgotten by academia.

Decentralized transactive energy community in edge grid with positive buildings and interactive electric vehicles

Decarbonization, Digitalization and Decentralization are the three key pillars to meet the significant rise of energy demand with the rapid development of urbanization, which enable the global low-carbon economy with transactive energy market. The total energy consumption of buildings and transport accounts for more than 70% in global final energy consumption but renewables only meet less than 20% in the demand of heating, cooling and transport. Therefore, buildings and electric vehicles have great potentials in allowing the optimization and balance of supply and demand with their cross-sector transactive behaviors for full-scale flexibility. This paper provides a systematic overview of the positive roles of buildings and interactive transaction behaviors of electric vehicles in establishing sustainable transactive energy community from energy physical space, data cyber space, and human social space. Low-carbon transactive energy solutions with key technologies and latest advances for net zero energy building with high electric vehicle density is discussed in a hierarchical way. Internet of things as the fundamental architecture enables digitalization and interoperability of transactive energy. Blockchain as the core element enables decentralization and transparency of transactive energy. Edge computing as the accelerator alleviates the issues of blockchain and speeds up blockchain-based transactive energy. A comprehensive survey of currently known projects and startups on blockchain-based transactive energy for cross-sector local community with buildings and electric vehicles is provided in the end with the discussion of the open challenges and future perspectives for this promising area.

Blockchain and MEC-assisted reliable billing data transmission over electric vehicular network: An actor—critic RL approach

Recently, electric vehicles (EVs) have been widely used under the call of green travel and environmental protection, and diverse requirements for charging are also increasing gradually. In order to ensure the authenticity and privacy of charging information interaction, blockchain technology is proposed and applied in charging station billing systems. However, there are some issues in blockchain itself, including lower computing efficiency of the nodes and higher energy consumption in the consensus process. To handle the above issues, in this paper, combining blockchain and mobile edge computing (MEC), we develop a reliable billing data transmission scheme to improve the computing capacity of nodes and reduce the energy consumption of the consensus process. By jointly optimizing the primary and replica nodes offloading decisions, block size and block interval, the transaction throughput of the blockchain system is maximized, as well as the latency and energy consumption of the system are minimized. Moreover, we formulate the joint optimization problem as a Markov decision process (MDP). To tackle the dynamic and continuity of the system state, the reinforcement learning (RL) is introduced to solve the MDP problem. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that the performance improvement of the proposed scheme through comparison with other existing schemes.

Blockchain adoption in food supply chains: a review and implementation framework

Blockchain technology has received significant attention from the food industry; however, due to the scarcity of successful Blockchain projects and sector-specific studies, a step-by-step approach for implementing Blockchain in food supply chains (FSCs) is still missing. A systematic literature review of 69 high-quality, peer-reviewed articles is utilized to capture Blockchain adoption drivers and barriers, applications, and implementation stages within FSCs. Current Blockchain issues such as scalability, regulations, privacy, and incentivization are identified as future research opportunities. Following innovation adoption theory, a three-stage conceptual framework for Blockchain implementation in FSCs is developed. The proposed framework is novel and is expected to benefit food chain managers in establishing the suitability of Blockchain for their organization and/or wider supply network. Identified influential factors, case examples, and implementation stages are expected to guide practitioners in developing a roadmap for adopting Blockchain in the food industry.

A Blockchain System Based on Quantum-Resistant Digital Signature

Blockchain, which has a distributed structure, has been widely used in many areas. Especially in the area of smart cities, blockchain technology shows great potential. The security issues of blockchain affect the construction of smart cities to varying degrees. With the rapid development of quantum computation, elliptic curves cryptosystems used in blockchain are not secure enough. This paper presents a blockchain system based on lattice cipher, which can resist the attack of quantum computation. The most challenge is that the size of public keys and signatures used by lattice cryptosystems is typically very large. As a result, each block in a blockchain can only accommodate a small number of transactions. It will affect the running speed and performance of the blockchain. For overcoming this problem, we proposed a way that we only put the hash values of public keys and signatures on the blockchain and store the complete content of them on an IPFS (interplanetary file system). In this way, the number of bytes occupied by each transaction is greatly reduced. We design a bitcoin exchange scheme to evaluate the performance of the proposed quantum-resistant blockchain system. The simulation platform is verified to be available and effective.