In the industry, blockchains are increasingly used as the backbone of product and process traceability. Blockchain-based traceability participates in the demonstration of product and/or process compliance with existing safety standards or quality criteria. In this perspective, services and applications built on top of blockchains are business-critical applications, because an intended failure or corruption of the system can lead to an important reputation loss regarding the products or the processes involved. The development of a blockchain-based business-critical application must be then conducted carefully, requiring a thorough justification of its dependability and security. To this end, this paper encourages an engineering perspective rooted in well-understood tools and concepts borrowed from the engineering of safety-critical systems. Concretely, we use a justification framework, called CAE (Claim, Argument, Evidence), by following an approach based on assurance cases, in order to provide convincing arguments that a business-critical blockchain-based application is dependable and secure. The application of this approach is sketched with a case study based on the blockchain HYPERLEDGER FABRIC.
Money transfer is an abstraction that realizes the core of cryptocurrencies. It has been shown that, contrary to common belief, money transfer in the presence of Byzantine faults can be implemented in asynchronous networks and does not require consensus. Nonetheless, existing implementations of money transfer still require a quadratic message complexity per payment, making attempts to scale hard. In common blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, this cost is mitigated by payment channels implemented as a second layer on top of the blockchain allowing to make many off-chain payments between two users who share a channel. Such channels only require on-chain transactions for channel opening and closing, while the intermediate payments are done off-chain with constant message complexity. But payment channels in-use today require synchrony, therefore they are inadequate for asynchronous money transfer systems. In this paper, we provide a series of possibility and impossibility results for payment channels in asynchronous money transfer systems. We first prove a quadratic lower bound on the message complexity of on-chain transfers. Then, we explore two types of payment channels, unidirectional and bidirectional. We define them as shared memory abstractions and prove that in certain cases they can be implemented as a second layer on top of an asynchronous money transfer system whereas in other cases it is impossible.
This paper presents algorithms for local inversion of maps and shows how several important computational problems such as cryptanalysis of symmetric encryption algorithms, RSA algorithm and solving the elliptic curve discrete log problem (ECDLP) can be addressed as local inversion problems. The methodology is termed as the \emph{Local Inversion Attack}. It utilizes the concept of \emph{Linear Complexity} (LC) of a recurrence sequence generated by the map defined by the cryptanalysis problem and the given data. It is shown that when the LC of the recurrence is bounded by a bound of polynomial order in the bit length of the input to the map, the local inversion can be accomplished in polynomial time. Hence an incomplete local inversion algorithm which searches a solution within a specified bound on computation can estimate the density of weak cases of cryptanalysis defined by such data causing low LC. Such cases can happen accidentally but cannot be avoided in practice and are fatal insecurity flaws of cryptographic primitives which are wrongly assumed to be secure on the basis of exponential average case complexity. An incomplete algorithm is proposed for solving problems such as key recovery of symmetric encryption algorithms, decryption of RSA ciphertext without factoring the modulus, decrypting any ciphertext of RSA given one plaintext ciphertext pair created with same private key in chosen ciphertext attack and solving the discrete logarithm on elliptic curves over finite fields (ECDLP) as local inversion problems. It is shown that when the LCs of the respective recurrences for given data are small, solutions of these problems are possible in practically feasible time and memory resources.
We propose a generic mechanism for incentivizing behavior in an arbitrary finite game using payments. Doing so is trivial if the mechanism is allowed to observe all actions taken in the game, as this allows it to simply punish those agents who deviate from the intended strategy. Instead, we consider an abstraction where the mechanism probabilistically infers information about what happened in the game. We show that payment schemes can be used to implement any set of utilities if and only if the mechanism can essentially infer completely what happened. We show that finding an optimal payment scheme for games of perfect information is \textsf{P}-complete, and conjecture it to be \textsf{PPAD}-hard for games of imperfect information. We prove a lower bound on the size of the payments, showing that the payments must be linear in the intended level of security. We demonstrate the applicability of our model to concrete problems in distributed computing, namely decentralized commerce and secure multiparty computation, for which the payments match the lower bound asymptotically.
Context: In recent decades, many financial markets and their participants have changed their working method from a completely manual and traditional one to an automatic one, benefiting from complex software systems. There are different approaches to the development of such software systems. Objective: In this paper, we study the application of the Multi Product Line (MPL) approach in the software ecosystem (SECO) of the equity market. By profiting from the concepts and practices of the MPL approach, we want to design a SECO that makes the real-time and automated flow of financial transaction data between market participants' software pieces possible. Method: We first provide some background information about the equity market, its participants and their relations, and two primary order life-cycles in which these players cooperate. After that, we analyze the variability in each market participant's software. Next, we describe the employed architecture and the implementation approach. Finally, we discuss three scenarios by which the whole proposed SECO is tested and validated. Results: To implement the mentioned working method, named Straight-through Processing (STP), different technical and non-technical elements' contribution is essential. Attaining success in developing the equity market's SECO addresses the technical aspect and prepares the technical infrastructure for the rest of the work. Conclusion: The successful validation of the equity market's SECO indicates that the adoption of the MPL approach is a viable strategy for the development of equity market SECOs. It also suggests that this approach is worthy of more attention and investment.
Technology has evolved over the years, making our lives easier. It has impacted the healthcare sector, increasing the average life expectancy of human beings. Still, there are gaps that remain unaddressed. There is a lack of transparency in the healthcare system, which results in inherent trust problems between patients and hospitals. In the present day, a patient does not know whether he or she will get the proper treatment from the hospital for the fee charged. A patient can claim reimbursement of the medical bill from any insurance company. However, today there is minimal scope for the Insurance Company to verify the validity of such bills or medical records. A patient can provide fake details to get financial benefits from the insurance company. Again, there are trust issues between the patient (i.e., the insurance claimer) and the insurance company. Blockchain integrated with the smart contract is a well-known disruptive technology that builds trust by providing transparency to the system. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-enabled Secure and Smart HealthCare System. Fairness of all the entities: patient, hospital, or insurance company involved in the system is guaranteed with no one trusting each other. Privacy and security of patients' medical data are ensured as well. We also propose a method for privacy-preserving sharing of aggregated data with the research community for their own purpose. Shared data must not be personally identifiable, i.e, no one can link the acquired data to the identity of any patient or their medical history. We have implemented the prototype in the Ethereum platform and Ropsten test network, and have included the analysis as well.
The new era of the Internet of Things (IoT) is changing our urban lives in every way. With the support of recent IoT technologies, IoT-enabled smart cities are capable of building extensive data networks incorporating a large number of heterogeneous devices participating in the data collection and decision-making process. This massive data backbone formed by IoT devices allows systems to perform real-time environmental monitoring and actuating. Coupled with high flexibility and ease of deployment, IoT-based solutions can be easily adopted for different application scenarios. However, there are many challenges that system designers would need to consider before employing large-scale IoT deployment. Our current infrastructure will have to quickly adapt to handle the big data in our systems, supply interoperability for cross-functional performance, and provide the cognitive capabilities for system intelligence. Most importantly, we must consider a new spectrum of security challenges arising from the new context. In this paper, we aim to provide general security guidelines for IoT-enabled smart city developments by 1) presenting some of the latest innovations in IoT-enabled smart cities, and highlighting common security challenges and research opportunities; 2) reviewing recent cryptographic security implementations for IoT-enabled smart cities; 3) using the Activity-Network-Things architecture to analyze major security challenges in IoT deployments and proposing a set of specialized security requirements for IoT-enabled smart cities; 4) providing a discussion on the potential prospect for IoT and IoT security.
The world population is anticipated to increase by close to 2 billion by 2050 causing a rapid escalation of food demand. A recent projection shows that the world is lagging behind accomplishing the "Zero Hunger" goal, in spite of some advancements. Socio-economic and well being fallout will affect the food security. Vulnerable groups of people will suffer malnutrition. To cater to the needs of the increasing population, the agricultural industry needs to be modernized, become smart, and automated. Traditional agriculture can be remade to efficient, sustainable, eco-friendly smart agriculture by adopting existing technologies. In this survey paper the authors present the applications, technological trends, available datasets, networking options, and challenges in smart agriculture. How Agro Cyber Physical Systems are built upon the Internet-of-Agro-Things is discussed through various application fields. Agriculture 4.0 is also discussed as a whole. We focus on the technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) which support the automation, along with the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) which provides data integrity and security. After an in-depth study of different architectures, we also present a smart agriculture framework which relies on the location of data processing. We have divided open research problems of smart agriculture as future research work in two groups - from a technological perspective and from a networking perspective. AI, ML, the blockchain as a DLT, and Physical Unclonable Functions (PUF) based hardware security fall under the technology group, whereas any network related attacks, fake data injection and similar threats fall under the network research problem group.
The concept of smart grid has been introduced as a new vision of the conventional power grid to figure out an efficient way of integrating green and renewable energy technologies. In this way, Internet-connected smart grid, also called energy Internet, is also emerging as an innovative approach to ensure the energy from anywhere at any time. The ultimate goal of these developments is to build a sustainable society. However, integrating and coordinating a large number of growing connections can be a challenging issue for the traditional centralized grid system. Consequently, the smart grid is undergoing a transformation to the decentralized topology from its centralized form. On the other hand, blockchain has some excellent features which make it a promising application for smart grid paradigm. In this paper, we have an aim to provide a comprehensive survey on application of blockchain in smart grid. As such, we identify the significant security challenges of smart grid scenarios that can be addressed by blockchain. Then, we present a number of blockchain-based recent research works presented in different literatures addressing security issues in the area of smart grid. We also summarize several related practical projects, trials, and products that have been emerged recently. Finally, we discuss essential research challenges and future directions of applying blockchain to smart grid security issues.
Explainable recommendation attempts to develop models that generate not only high-quality recommendations but also intuitive explanations. The explanations may either be post-hoc or directly come from an explainable model (also called interpretable or transparent model in some context). Explainable recommendation tries to address the problem of why: by providing explanations to users or system designers, it helps humans to understand why certain items are recommended by the algorithm, where the human can either be users or system designers. Explainable recommendation helps to improve the transparency, persuasiveness, effectiveness, trustworthiness, and satisfaction of recommendation systems. In this survey, we review works on explainable recommendation in or before the year of 2019. We first highlight the position of explainable recommendation in recommender system research by categorizing recommendation problems into the 5W, i.e., what, when, who, where, and why. We then conduct a comprehensive survey of explainable recommendation on three perspectives: 1) We provide a chronological research timeline of explainable recommendation, including user study approaches in the early years and more recent model-based approaches. 2) We provide a two-dimensional taxonomy to classify existing explainable recommendation research: one dimension is the information source (or display style) of the explanations, and the other dimension is the algorithmic mechanism to generate explainable recommendations. 3) We summarize how explainable recommendation applies to different recommendation tasks, such as product recommendation, social recommendation, and POI recommendation. We also devote a section to discuss the explanation perspectives in broader IR and AI/ML research. We end the survey by discussing potential future directions to promote the explainable recommendation research area and beyond.
Machine learning techniques have deeply rooted in our everyday life. However, since it is knowledge- and labor-intensive to pursue good learning performance, human experts are heavily involved in every aspect of machine learning. In order to make machine learning techniques easier to apply and reduce the demand for experienced human experts, automated machine learning (AutoML) has emerged as a hot topic with both industrial and academic interest. In this paper, we provide an up to date survey on AutoML. First, we introduce and define the AutoML problem, with inspiration from both realms of automation and machine learning. Then, we propose a general AutoML framework that not only covers most existing approaches to date but also can guide the design for new methods. Subsequently, we categorize and review the existing works from two aspects, i.e., the problem setup and the employed techniques. Finally, we provide a detailed analysis of AutoML approaches and explain the reasons underneath their successful applications. We hope this survey can serve as not only an insightful guideline for AutoML beginners but also an inspiration for future research.