Trusted Platform Research Articles

Data-Sharing System with Attribute-Based Encryption in Blockchain and Privacy Computing

With the development of the data-sharing system in recent years, financial management systems and their privacy have sparked great interest. Existing financial data-sharing systems store metadata, which include a hash value and database index on the blockchain, and store high-capacity actual data in the center database. However, current data-sharing systems largely depend on centralized systems, which are susceptible to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and present a centralized attack vector. Furthermore, storing data in a local center database has a high risk of information disclosure and tampering. In this paper, we propose the ChainMaker Privacy Computing (CPC) system, a new decentralized data-sharing system for secure financial data, to solve this problem. It provides a series of financial data information and a data structure rather than actual data on the blockchain to protect the privacy of data. We utilize a smart contract to establish a trusted platform for the local database to obtain encrypted data. We design a resource catalog to provide a trusted environment of data usage in the privacy computing system that is visible for members on the blockchain. Based on cipher-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE), We design a CPC-CP-ABE algorithm to enable fine-grained access control through attribute based encryption. Finally, We propose an efficient scheme that allows authenticated data-sharing systems to perform Boolean searches on encrypted data information. The results of experiment show that the CPC system can finish trusted data sharing to all organizations on the blockchain.

Privacy Preserving Technology using Federated Learning and Blockchain in protecting against Adversarial Attacks for Retinal Imaging

PurposeCollaboration provides valuable data for robust artificial intelligence (AI) model development. Federated learning (FL) is a privacy enhancing technology that allows collaboration while respecting privacy via the development of models without raw data transfer. However state-of-the-art FL models still face challenges in non-independent and identically distributed (non-i.i.d.) health care settings and remain susceptible to privacy breaches. We propose a novel FL framework coupled with blockchain technology to address these challenges. DesignRetrospective multicohort study Subjects and Methods27,145 images from Singapore, China and Taiwan were used to design a novel FL aggregation method for the detection of myopic macular degeneration (MMD) from fundus photographs and macular disease from optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans in feature distribution skew and label distribution imbalance scenarios. We further performed adversarial attacks (label flipping and clean label). As proof of concept, blockchain was incorporated into FL to demonstrate secure transfer of model updates across collaborating sites. Main Outcome MeasuresWe evaluated our FL model performance in MMD and OCT classification and compared our model against state-of the-art FL and centralized models. ResultsOur FL model showed robust performance with areas under the receiving operating characteristic curves (AUC) of 0.868±0.009 for MMD detection and 0.970±0.012 for OCT macular disease classification. In label flipping attack, our FL model had an AUC of 0.861±0.019, similar to the centralized model (AUC 0.856± 0.015) and higher than other FL models (AUC 0.578–0.819) In clean label attack, our FL model had an AUC of 0.878±0.006 which was comparable to the centralized model (AUC 0.878±0.001) and superior to other state-of-the-art FL models with AUC of 0.529-0.838. Simulation showed that the additional time with blockchain in one global epoch was around 5 seconds. The addition of blockchain to the FL framework was feasible with a minimal impact on model development time. ConclusionsOur proposed FL algorithm overcomes the shortcoming of the traditional FL in non i.i.d. situations and remains robust to against adversarial attacks. The integration of blockchain adds further security during the transfer of model updates. Blockchain-enabled FL can be a trusted platform for collaborative health AI research.

“Build back the confidence”: qualitative exploration of community experiences with polio vaccination in the Covid-19 context in Cameroon and Ethiopia

BackgroundIn 2020, as the Global Polio Eradication Initiative worked to address outbreaks of vaccine-derived poliovirus Type 2, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the Covid-19 pandemic suspended routine immunization campaigns worldwide. There were concerns about how Covid-19 – and the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines – might influence uptake of the oral polio vaccine (OPV). To inform communications strategies, we conducted a qualitative study to explore insights from community stakeholders into how Covid-19 influenced perceptions of OPV and vaccination campaigns.MethodsWe conducted 32 focus group discussions with caregivers of children under 5 and polio frontline workers as well as 22 in-depth interviews with healthcare practitioners and social influencers in Cameroon and Ethiopia. In each country, we purposively sampled stakeholders per discrete eligibility criteria from one urban (Yaoundé and Addis Ababa) and one peri-urban site (Bafia and Adama).ResultsWe found that the Covid-19 pandemic and related precautionary measures introduced new challenges for OPV campaigns in Cameroon and Ethiopia, including reduced caregiver confidence in routine immunizations and an erosion of trust between caregivers and frontline workers. A salient concern among caregivers was that Covid-19 vaccines might be delivered in place of OPV. When asked how to maximize community support for future OPV campaigns, stakeholders suggested to rebuild caregiver trust for frontline workers; use a variety of information sources to ensure consistent messaging on vaccination reaches caregivers in a timely manner; increase remuneration, resources, and training for frontline workers; and leverage existing community influencers and groups.ConclusionsDespite the challenges to vaccination campaigns experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic, it was anticipated that the Polio Programme would continue to experience community support for OPV with appropriate messaging and community coordination. These efforts would “build back the confidence” among caregivers and other community stakeholders regarding community-based vaccination campaigns. Social and behavior change approaches that leverage clear, consistent messaging from multiple trusted platforms could address caregiver trust and dismantle mis/dis-information that creates confusion surrounding vaccines.

Blockchain based secret key management for trusted platform module standard in reconfigurable platform

SummaryThe growing sophistication of cyber attacks, vulnerabilities in high computing systems and increasing dependency on cryptography to protect our digital data, make it more important to keep secret keys safe and secure. A few major issues of secret keys, like incorrect use of keys, inappropriate storage of keys, inadequate protection of keys, insecure movement of keys, lack of audit logging, insider threats and nondestruction of keys can compromise the whole security system severely. In this work, we propose a field programmable gate array (FPGA)‐based trusted platform module (TPM) framework for operating system companies and OS users, utilizing blockchain to address NIST‐recommended secret key management issues. The security processor used in OS user machines is partitioned into three areas such that processor area, confidential area, and crypto area. The isolated secret key memory in confidential area, along with a private blockchain (BC) can log the life cycle of secret keys of TPM standard. We have also implemented a special custom bus interconnect, which receives custom crypto instructions from Processing Element (PE). During the execution of crypto instructions, the architecture ensures that secret keys are present in confidential area and crypto area but never in the processor area. The movements of secret keys between confidential area, and crypto area are recorded cryptographically after the proper authentication process controlled by the proposed hardware‐based private BC framework. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first attempt to implement a blockchain‐based framework between OS company and OS users to address NIST recommended secret key management issues of TPM standard hardware environment. The additional cost of resource usage and timing complexity we spent to implement the proposed idea is nominal. The proposed architecture is implemented with Xilinx EDA tool using FPGA board.

BLOCKCHAIN IN AGRICULTURE: TRANSFORMING THE FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN FOR TRANSPARENCY AND EFFICIENCY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

This paper explores the transformative role of blockchain technology in the European Union’s agriculture sector, focusing on the “Farm to Fork” concept. Employing a literature review, the paper examines the applications of blockchain within EU agriculture and its alignment with the EU’s emphasis on food supply chain transparency and efficiency. Several illustrative cases of blockchain implementation in the EU, such as the IBM Food Trust platform, are highlighted. The research underscores how blockchain enhances traceability, trust, and sustainability, thereby strengthening food safety and quality. The paper concludes that blockchain is catalysing a revolution in the EU’s food supply chain, fostering transparency and efficiency while aligning with the overarching objectives of the “Farm to Fork” concept.

Performances of the CFD open-source HPC platform TRUST on GPUs

TRUST is a versatile open-source CFD tool developed by the CEA since 1993. Initially designed for nuclear applications, TRUST has evolved to tackle a range of thermohydraulic challenges, from one-phase to multiphase flows. It offers various numerical methods and supports different mesh types for efficient computation on diverse computing platforms, including high-performance computers. Recently, efforts have been made to integrate GPU computing libraries like AmgX, rocALUTION, and Kokkos aiming for a hybrid CPU/GPU code achieving better performance portability. This paper provides an overview of the TRUST platform, discusses its GPU computing strategy, and presents selected associated results.

Safeguarding trust in a digital ecosystem

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to elaborate the significance of safeguards in digital ecosystems and their role in generating trust among participants. This paper argues that the right mix and number of safeguards are crucial for an ecosystem’s growth and success. It offers ecosystem orchestrators concrete guidelines for how to implement and monitor safeguards.Design/methodology/approachThis research is based on both consulting experience and publicly available information on several digital ecosystems.FindingsThis research conceptualizes safeguards as precautionary mechanisms that mandate or promote desirable behavior in an effort to engender trust among ecosystem participants. Safeguards can take various forms, including passwords, escrow, user privacy controls, ratings and reviews and policies and contracts. Striking the right balance of safeguards – neither too few nor too many – is crucial for ecosystem orchestrators. This paper identifies the factors that determine the optimal mix of safeguards, including the power asymmetry between sellers and buyers, the sophistication of participants, the nature of transactions, the cost of negative outcomes and the cost-benefit tradeoff.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to illuminate the relationship between safeguards and trust in the context of digital ecosystem. It is also one of the few attempts to provide managerial guidance for ecosystem designers trying to structure their platform for trust.

A novel architecture to virtualise a hardware-bound trusted platform module

Security and trust are particularly relevant in modern softwarised infrastructures, such as cloud environments, as applications are deployed on platforms owned by third parties, are publicly accessible on the Internet and can share the hardware with other tenants. Traditionally, operating systems and applications have leveraged hardware tamper-proof chips, such as the Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) to implement security workflows, such as remote attestation, and to protect sensitive data against software attacks. This approach does not easily translate to the cloud environment, wherein the isolation provided by the hypervisor makes it impractical to leverage the hardware root of trust in the virtual domains. Moreover, the scalability needs of the cloud often collide with the scarce hardware resources and inherent limitations of TPMs. For this reason, existing implementations of virtual TPMs (vTPMs) are based on TPM emulators. Although more flexible and scalable, this approach is less secure. In fact, each vTPM is vulnerable to software attacks both at the virtualised and hypervisor levels. In this work, we propose a novel design for vTPMs that provides a binding to an underlying physical TPM; the new design, akin to a virtualisation extension for TPMs, extends the latest TPM 2.0 specification. We minimise the number of required additions to the TPM data structures and commands so that they do not require a new, non-backwards compatible version of the specification. Moreover, we support migration of vTPMs among TPM-equipped hosts, as this is considered a key feature in a highly virtualised environment. Finally, we propose a flexible approach to vTPM object creation that protects vTPM secrets either in hardware or software, depending on the required level of assurance.

SvTPM: SGX-Based Virtual Trusted Platform Modules for Cloud Computing

Virtual Trusted Platform Modules (vTPMs) are widely used in commercial cloud platforms (e.g., VMware Cloud, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure) to provide virtual root-of-trust and security services for virtual machines. Unfortunately, current state-of-the-art vTPM implementations for cloud computing cannot provide strong protection for vTPMs at run-time and suffer from poor performance under binding vTPMs to a physical TPM. In this paper, we propose SvTPM, an SGX-based virtual trusted platform module, which provides complete life cycle protection of vTPMs in the cloud and does not rely on the physical TPM. SvTPM provides strong isolation protection so malicious cloud tenants or even cloud administrators cannot access vTPM's private keys or any other sensitive data. In this paper, we implement a prototype of SvTPM, which identifies and solves a couple of critical security challenges for vTPM protection with SGX, such as NVRAM rollback attacks, NVRAM binding attacks, and vTPM rollback attacks. SvTPM also shows how to establish trust between vTPM and SGX Platform. Our performance evaluation shows that the NVRAM launch time of SvTPM is <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1700\times$</tex-math></inline-formula> faster than vTPM built upon hardware TPM. In TPM standard command evaluation, we find that SvTPM incurs negligible performance overhead while providing strong isolation and protection. To our knowledge, SvTPM is the first practical work to solve the critical security challenges of securing vTPM using SGX.

QKPT: Securing Your Private Keys in Cloud With Performance, Scalability and Transparency

Private key (e.g., RSA key) protection is a significant issue for cloud but existing keyless or keyguard solutions suffer from performance, elasticity or applicability limitations. Recently, represented by Intel KPT, a novel keyguard architecture emerges to combine trusted platform module and crypto accelerator for achieving both security and performance. However, the straight use of KPT for private key protection may not be a good fit in cloud as it incurs challenges on protection capacity, key provisioning latency and transparency. Based on KPT-like hardware, we propose QKPT, a comprehensive key management system to bring your own private keys (BYOPK) into multi-tenant clouds. QKPT introduces a carefully-designed key wrapping layer to overcome these challenges. A small symmetric wrapping key (SWK) is generated for each tenant as the master key to resolve the former two challenges, while a special private key wrapping scheme is adopted to resolve the transparency limitation. Additionally, QKPT incorporates certificate trust to enhance the security of the SWK lifecycle and provides a hardened key server solution without expensive HSM. The evaluation shows that QKPT has a low runtime overhead ( <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\leq$</tex-math></inline-formula> 1.2% for SSL/TLS handshakes) and still greatly outperforms the software baseline (3.5x-17x) owing to the crypto offloading.

A Review of the Key Technology in a Blockchain Building Decentralized Trust Platform

Currently, the trust mechanisms of various Internet application platforms are still built under the orders of centralized authorities. This centralized trust mechanism generally suffers from problems such as excessive power of central nodes, single point of failure and data privacy leakage. Blockchain is a new type of distributed data architecture with non-tamperability, openness and transparency, and traceability, which can achieve secure and trustworthy sharing of data without the participation of third-party authorities. The decentralized trust mechanism built based on the blockchain provides a new research paradigm with broad development prospects to solve the problem of establishing reliable information sharing under the environmental conditions of incomplete reliability in finance, healthcare, energy, and data security. In response to the issues exposed by centralized trust mechanisms in recent years, based on the critical technology of blockchain, this paper surveys the relevant literature around the vital issue of building a decentralized and secure trust mechanism. First, the decentralized trust mechanism architecture is sorted out by comparing different decentralized platforms. The blockchain is divided into the data layer, network layer, consensus layer, contract layer and application layer, which correspond to the theory, implementation, operation, extension, and application of the decentralized trust mechanism of a blockchain, a district-centric platform. Secondly, the principles and technologies of blockchain are elaborated in detail, focusing on the underlying principles, consensus algorithms, and smart contracts. Finally, blockchain problems and development directions are summarized in light of relevant literature.

SlypNet: Spikelet-based yield prediction of wheat using advanced plant phenotyping and computer vision techniques.

The application of computer vision in agriculture has already contributed immensely to restructuring the existing field practices starting from the sowing to the harvesting. Among the different plant parts, the economic part, the yield, has the highest importance and becomes the ultimate goal for the farming community. It depends on many genetic and environmental factors, so this curiosity about knowing the yield brought several precise pre-harvest prediction methods using different ways. Out of those techniques, non-invasive yield prediction techniques using computer vision have been proved to be the most efficient and trusted platform. This study developed a novel methodology, called SlypNet, using advanced deep learning networks, i.e., Mask R-CNN and U-Net, which can extract various plant morphological features like spike and spikelet from the visual image of the wheat plant and provide a high-throughput yield estimate with great precision. Mask R-CNN outperformed previous networks in spike detection by its precise detection performance with a mean average precision (mAP) of 97.57%, a F1 score of 0.67, and an MCC of 0.91 by overcoming several natural field constraints like overlapping and background interference, variable resolution, and high bushiness of plants. The spikelet detection module’s accuracy and consistency were tested with about 99% validation accuracy of the model and the least error, i.e., a mean square error of 1.3 from a set of typical and complex views of wheat spikes. Spikelet yield cumulatively showed the probable production capability of each plant. Our method presents an integrated deep learning platform of spikelet-based yield prediction comprising spike and spikelet detection, leading to higher precision over the existing methods.

TPM-Based Conditional Privacy-Preserving Authentication Protocol in VANETs

With the establishment of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), research on vehicle ad-hoc networks (VANETs) has played an irreplaceable role in improving traffic safety and efficiency. However, because the deployment of devices based on the IoV is in an open field, the IoV is extremely vulnerable to various attacks without security protection, e.g., remote intrusion, control, trajectory tracking, etc. In order to avoid the above-mentioned attacks and resource abuses, provably secure cryptography primitives are generally considered to guarantee and realize the security of VANETs. This paper proposes a TPM-based conditional privacy-preserving authentication protocol (T-CPPA) which achieves both the integrity and the authenticity of the message/instruct content. The vehicle’s privacy is protected by embedding the system master private key into the trust platform module (TPM) which is responsible for generating pseudonyms and signature keys. The authenticity of message content is ensured by calculating message similarity in a cluster-based model. We give the concrete construction of our T-CPPA authentication scheme in symmetric bilinear groups and design a batch validation algorithm to improve efficiency. Security analysis shows that our scheme can resist various traditional attacks in VANETs, and the experimental results indicate that our scheme is efficient and useful in practice.

Quality of Life and Community Wellbeing of Members Associated With Village Savings and Loans Associations as a Model of Sharing Economy in the Least Developing Countries: A Case of Mzuzu City in Northern Malawi, Southern Africa.

This study was aimed at examining the impacts of the Sharing economy on the individual and community Quality of Life (QOL) and wellbeing by looking at their associated influencing factors using Village Savings and Loans Associations as a model of sharing economy in Malawi. An online community-based cross-sectional study design was conducted from November 2020 through January 2021. In the survey, 402 Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) members from the Mzuzu City area participated, recruited using snowball and respondent-driven sampling techniques. The sample size was computed using a single population proportion using the Yamane formula. Descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic regression model techniques were also employed. Additionally, we used the Chi-Square test, two-way ANOVA, and Ordinal regression model to determine statistical associations between socioeconomic data and QOL and wellbeing variables with a 5% level of significance. On the aspect of community wellbeing, the findings of our study indicated that income (levels and disposal) provided members with options to live a better QOL and wellbeing within the community by either facilitating payment for better education, eating healthier foods, acquiring assets, etc. Further, the absence of discrimination provided a platform for voice, inclusion, and social trust, enhancing freedom of expression. We also found that education facilitated better earnings and knowledge of public health-related issues. As for the contribution to the sharing economy, our study has emphasized the role played by trust in enhancing sharing economy. We recommend and encourage people to join these VSLAs so as to improve their QOL and wellbeing. However, there is a need to replicate the study on a larger scale to validate our study findings for effective policy formulation and implementation geared to improving the overall quality of people’s lives. Based on these findings, we further recommend that authorities reinstate programs like National Strategy for Financial Inclusion 2016–2020 and Savings and Loan Groups Best Practice Guidelines (SLG BPGs) 2016–2017 that could further enhance the future of VSLAs, which are vital for QOL and community wellbeing of the people in developing countries like Malawi.

Blockchain and IoT for Personal and Physical Security

The Internet of Things connects intelligent physical objects (things) and people. IoT enables every “Thing” to connect and interact, creating and transferring massive amounts of data. Because IoT de-vices handle so much data, it became necessary to incorporate Cloud Computing, Machine Learning, and Information Modelling. The significant rise in IoT is creating a surge in ICT business. By 2020, 95% of new goods will include IoT at their heart. As can be seen, IoT items will be more pre-sent, raising concerns about their visibility on the internet and legal access to resources. Innovating apps that improve a person's physical and personal life are enabled by IoT, but people's lack of security and susceptibility may lead to serious concerns like home security being penetrated and centralized organisations employing sensitive data being hacked. Blockchain technology is getting widespread interest and investigation because to its remarkable solutions to the challenges connected with the traditional centralized IoT architecture. Because there are so many IoT devices on the mar-ket for enhancing physical and mental health, and overall quality of life, a distributed trust platform that ensures scalability, privacy, and reliability is required. Integration of IoT and BC is a complex task. This research paper's goal is to create an IOT and Blockchain Application Environment that will improve a person's personal and physical existence. Thus, our main emphasis will be on developing a secure and safe Smart Home. Our suggested design uses a hierarchical and distributed blockchain platform to preserve security and privacy while meeting IoT needs. Thus, we have linked home automation with physical health, assuring safety, convenience, and health.

About the specifics of information security requirements development for a scalable trusted platform

About the specifics of information security requirements development for a scalable trusted platform

ZERO TRUST TECHNOLOGY APPLICATION FOR AI MEDICAL RESEARCH

In these article, we briefly describe the relevance of introducing artificial intelligence into the healthcare sector. We point out the problems associated with the confidentiality of data and their collection when checking the performance of algorithms. We also talk about solving the problem in the form of a Zero Trust platform.

Quantum web of trust

AbstractAuthentication is the foremost requirement for any online secure transaction. In post quantum era, public key encryption is considered no longer a safe option. The research is therefore, progressing toward providing a quantum resistant solution using both classical as well as quantum computing medium. The paper proposes a quantum based mutual authentication protocol for autonomous system, utilizing the properties of quantum mechanics for exchange, storage and validation of confidential data. The protocol so designed evolves into a chain of mutually trusted nodes to form quantum web of trust. The protocol cater for devices infected with malware by utilizing physically unclonable function inside trusted platform module. The mathematical expressions conveying the correctness of operations has been demonstrated on a quantum machine to verify the efficacy of the protocol. The security analysis demonstrates the ability of the proposed protocol to mitigate cyber attacks and eavesdropping in the network.

Scientific Associations as Communities of Practice for Fostering Collaborative Knowledge Building: Case Study of IAKM

Knowledge building is a social process that is driven by the willingness of people to share their expertise and create new knowledge. Scientific Communities of Practice (CoPs) are communities of professors and researchers whose aim is to foster scientific knowledge generation. In the KM literature, research concerning this kind of CoPs has been substantially neglected so far. The present research analyses the case study of the International Association for Knowledge Management (IAKM) seen as a scientific CoP where members are mostly academics with research interests in developing and promoting knowledge management. Based on a collection of quantitative and qualitative data about member collaborations and scientific production, the study investigates the structure of interactions and the collaborative processes of IAKM members and the specific mechanisms of knowledge building within this CoP, seen as a paradigmatic example of scientific community. Members were asked to respond to a survey regarding their collaborative activities carried out with other IAKM members in the period of 2011 – 2020. The descriptive analysis revealed the kind of collaborations, the distribution of interactions across the community, and the dynamic patterns over time. A follow-up social network analysis was used to provide deeper insight into the community structure and dynamics. The research found that a CoP can really be useful for progress in a scientific field because it can provide a platform for trust and mutual acquaintance that reduces barriers to collaboration and knowledge building across different universities, professional roles, countries, and cultures, which is increasingly important for the progress of science. Most importantly, IAKM exhibited a cohesive and active core membership with pivotal roles played by a number of active members, which contributed significantly to the growth of the Association and, in general, to the advancements in the field of KM through collaborative knowledge building.

Utilizing and Extending Trusted Execution Environment in Heterogeneous SoCs for a Pay-Per-Device IP Licensing Scheme

A pay-per-use Intellectual Property (IP) licensing model that can protect IPs from multiple participants will benefit the FPGA IP market and Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Existing protection solutions in modern FPGA devices rely on dedicated decryption engines that use cryptographic keys, which require programming them in a trusted environment. Since designs from multiple participants need protection in a typical licensing scenario, it requires a trusted third party for key programming and encryption tasks. These requirements led to the proposition of several licensing schemes; however, they do not address several security and flexibility challenges. Therefore, in this work, we propose a pay-per-device IP licensing scheme that is secure, less restrictive for the system developer and offers protection against malicious IP cores. The scheme relies on a Security Framework (SFW) that provides a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), which handles key storage, cryptographic operations, and security monitoring. A device running the SFW can be considered a trusted platform that provides a direct secure path for the IP from its vendor to the device’s TEE, where it is decrypted, analyzed and, then configured on the programmable logic.