Blockchain for Distributed Systems Security

AN ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO USING BLOCKCHAIN TO PROVIDE FLEXIBILITY, COST-SAVINGS, AND SECURITY TO DATA MANAGEMENT, DATA ANALYSIS, AND INFORMATION SHARING

Blockchain for Distributed Systems Security contains a description of the properties that underpin the formal foundations of Blockchain technologies and explores the practical issues for deployment in cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms. The authors—noted experts in the field—present security and privacy issues that must be addressed for Blockchain technologies to be adopted for civilian and military domains. The book covers a range of topics including data provenance in cloud storage, secure IoT models, auditing architecture, and empirical validation of permissioned Blockchain platforms.

The book's security and privacy analysis helps with an understanding of the basics of Blockchain and it explores the quantifying impact of the new attack surfaces introduced by Blockchain technologies and platforms. In addition, the book contains relevant and current updates on the topic. This important resource:

• Provides an overview of Blockchain-based secure data management and storage for cloud and IoT
• Covers cutting-edge research findings on topics including invariant-based supply chain protection, information sharing framework, and trust worthy information federation
• Addresses security and privacy concerns in Blockchain in key areas, such as preventing digital currency miners from launching attacks against mining pools, empirical analysis of the attack surface of Blockchain, and more

Written for researchers and experts in computer science and engineering, Blockchain for Distributed Systems Security contains the most recent information and academic research to provide an understanding of the application of Blockchain technology.

SACHIN S. SHETTY, PHD, is an Associate Professor in the Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center and Department of Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Engineering at Old Dominion University.

CHARLES A. KAMHOUA, PHD, is a researcher at the US Army Research Laboratory's Network Security Branch.

LAURENT L. NJILLA, PHD, is a research electronics engineer and the program manager of Disruptive Information Technology at the Information Directorate/Cyber Assurance Branch of the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Foreword xiii

Preface xv

List of Contributors xix

Part I Introduction to Blockchain 1

1 Introduction 3
Sachin S. Shetty, Laurent Njilla, and Charles A. Kamhoua

1.1 Blockchain Overview 3

1.1.1 Blockchain Building Blocks 5

1.1.2 Blockchain Commercial Use Cases 6

1.1.3 Blockchain Military Cyber Operations Use Cases 11

1.1.4 Blockchain Challenges 13

1.2 Overview of the Book 16

1.2.1 Chapter 2: Distributed Consensus Protocols and Algorithms 16

1.2.2 Chapter 3: Overview of Attack Surfaces in Blockchain 17

1.2.3 Chapter 4: Data Provenance in Cloud Storage with Blockchain 17

1.2.4 Chapter 5: Blockchain-based Solution to Automotive Security and Privacy 18

1.2.5 Chapter 6: Blockchain-based Dynamic Key Management for IoT-Transportation Security Protection 19

1.2.6 Chapter 7: Blockchain-enabled Information Sharing Framework for Cybersecurity 19

1.2.7 Chapter 8: Blockcloud Security Analysis 20

1.2.8 Chapter 9: Security and Privacy of Permissioned and Permissionless Blockchain 20

1.2.9 Chapter 10: Shocking Public Blockchains’ Memory with Unconfirmed Transactions—New DDoS Attacks and Countermeasures 21

1.2.10 Chapter 11: Preventing Digital Currency Miners From Launching Attacks Against Mining Pools by a Reputation-Based Paradigm 21

1.2.11 Chapter 12: Private Blockchain Configurations for Improved IoT Security 22

1.2.12 Chapter 13: Blockchain Evaluation Platform 22

References 23

2 Distributed Consensus Protocols and Algorithms 25
Yang Xiao, Ning Zhang, Jin Li, Wenjing Lou, and Y. Thomas Hou

2.1 Introduction 25

2.2 Fault-tolerant Consensus in a Distributed System 26

2.2.1 The System Model 26

2.2.2 BFT Consensus 28

2.2.3 The OM Algorithm 29

2.2.4 Practical Consensus Protocols in Distributed Computing 30

2.3 The Nakamoto Consensus 37

2.3.1 The Consensus Problem 38

2.3.2 Network Model 38

2.3.3 The Consensus Protocol 39

2.4 Emerging Blockchain Consensus Algorithms 40

2.4.1 Proof of Stake 41

2.4.2 BFT-based Consensus 42

2.4.3 Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) 44

2.4.4 Ripple 45

2.5 Evaluation and Comparison 47

2.6 Summary 47

Acknowledgment 49

References 49

3 Overview of Attack Surfaces in Blockchain 51
Muhammad Saad, Jeffrey Spaulding, Laurent Njilla, Charles A. Kamhoua, DaeHun Nyang, and Aziz Mohaisen

3.1 Introduction 51

3.2 Overview of Blockchain and its Operations 53

3.3 Blockchain Attacks 54

3.3.1 Blockchain Fork 54

3.3.2 Stale Blocks and Orphaned Blocks 54

3.3.3 Countering Blockchain Structure Attacks 55

3.4 Blockchain’s Peer-to-Peer System 55

3.4.1 Selfish Mining 56

3.4.2 The 51% Attack 57

3.4.3 DNS Attacks 57

3.4.4 DDoS Attacks 58

3.4.5 Consensus Delay 59

3.4.6 Countering Peer-to-Peer Attacks 59

3.5 Application Oriented Attacks 60

3.5.1 Blockchain Ingestion 60

3.5.2 Double Spending 60

3.5.3 Wallet Theft 61

3.5.4 Countering Application Oriented Attacks 61

3.6 Related Work 61

3.7 Conclusion and Future Work 62

References 62

Part II Blockchain Solutions for Distributed System Security 67

4 ProvChain: Blockchain-based Cloud Data Provenance 69
Xueping Liang, Sachin S. Shetty, Deepak Tosh, Laurent Njilla, Charles A. Kamhoua, and Kevin Kwiat

4.1 Introduction 69

4.2 Background and Related Work 70

4.2.1 Data Provenance 70

4.2.2 Data Provenance in the Cloud 71

4.2.3 Blockchain 73

4.2.4 Blockchain and Data Provenance 74

4.3 ProvChain Architecture 75

4.3.1 Architecture Overview 76

4.3.2 Preliminaries and Concepts 77

4.3.3 Threat Model 78

4.3.4 Key Establishment 78

4.4 ProvChain Implementation 79

4.4.1 Provenance Data Collection and Storage 80

4.4.2 Provenance Data Validation 83

4.5 Evaluation 85

4.5.1 Summary of ProvChain’s Capabilities 85

4.5.2 Performance and Overhead 86

4.6 Conclusions and Future Work 90

Acknowledgment 91

References 92

5 A Blockchain-based Solution to Automotive Security and Privacy 95
Ali Dorri, Marco Steger, Salil S. Kanhere, and Raja Jurdak

5.1 Introduction 95

5.2 An Introduction to Blockchain 98

5.3 The Proposed Framework 101

5.4 Applications 103

5.4.1 Remote Software Updates 103

5.4.2 Insurance 105

5.4.3 Electric Vehicles and Smart Charging Services 105

5.4.4 Car-sharing Services 106

5.4.5 Supply Chain 106

5.4.6 Liability 107

5.5 Evaluation and Discussion 108

5.5.1 Security and Privacy Analysis 108

5.5.2 Performance Evaluation 109

5.6 Related Works 112

5.7 Conclusion 113

References 114

6 Blockchain-based Dynamic Key Management for IoT-Transportation Security Protection 117
Ao Lei, Yue Cao, Shihan Bao, Philip Asuquom, Haitham Cruickshank, and Zhili Sun

6.1 Introduction 117

6.2 Use Case 119

6.2.1 Message Handover in VCS 120

6.3 Blockchain-based Dynamic Key Management Scheme 124

6.4 Dynamic Transaction Collection Algorithm 125

6.4.1 Transaction Format 125

6.4.2 Block Format 127

6.5 Time Composition 128

6.5.1 Dynamic Transaction Collection Algorithm 129

6.6 Performance Evaluation 130

6.6.1 Experimental Assumptions and Setup 130

6.6.2 Processing Time of Cryptographic Schemes 132

6.6.3 Handover Time 133

6.6.4 Performance of the Dynamic Transaction Collection Algorithm 135

6.7 Conclusion and Future Work 138

References 140

7 Blockchain-enabled Information Sharing Framework for Cybersecurity 143
Abdulhamid Adebayo, Danda B. Rawat, Laurent Njilla, and Charles A. Kamhoua

7.1 Introduction 143

7.2 The BIS Framework 145

7.3 Transactions on BIS 146

7.4 Cyberattack Detection and Information Sharing 147

7.5 Cross-group Attack Game in Blockchain-based BIS Framework: One-way Attack 149

7.6 Cross-group Attack Game in Blockchain-based BIS Framework: Two-way Attack 151

7.7 Stackelberg Game for Cyberattack and Defense Analysis 152

7.8 Conclusion 156

References 157

Part III Blockchain Security 159

8 Blockcloud Security Analysis 161
Deepak Tosh, Sachin S. Shetty, Xueping Liang, Laurent Njilla, Charles A. Kamhoua, and Kevin Kwiat

8.1 Introduction 161

8.2 Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms 163

8.2.1 Proof-of-Work (PoW) Consensus 164

8.2.2 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Consensus 165

8.2.3 Proof-of-Activity (PoA) Consensus 167

8.2.4 Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) Consensus 168

8.2.5 Proof-of-Elapsed-Time (PoET) Consensus 169

8.2.6 Proof-of-Luck (PoL) Consensus 170

8.2.7 Proof-of-Space (PoSpace) Consensus 170

8.3 Blockchain Cloud and Associated Vulnerabilities 171

8.3.1 Blockchain and Cloud Security 171

8.3.2 Blockchain Cloud Vulnerabilities 174

8.4 System Model 179

8.5 Augmenting with Extra Hash Power 180

8.6 Disruptive Attack Strategy Analysis 181

8.6.1 Proportional Reward 181

8.6.2 Pay-per-last N-shares (PPLNS) Reward 184

8.7 Simulation Results and Discussion 187

8.8 Conclusions and Future Directions 188

Acknowledgment 190

References 190

9 Permissioned and Permissionless Blockchains 193
Andrew Miller

9.1 Introduction 193

9.2 On Choosing Your Peers Wisely 194

9.3 Committee Election Mechanisms 196

9.4 Privacy in Permissioned and Permissionless Blockchains 199

9.5 Conclusion 201

References 202

10 Shocking Blockchain’s Memory with Unconfirmed Transactions: New DDoS Attacks and Countermeasures 205
Muhammad Saad, Laurent Njilla, Charles A. Kamhoua, Kevin Kwiat, and Aziz Mohaisen

10.1 Introduction 205

10.2 Related Work 207

10.3 An Overview of Blockchain and Lifecycle 208

10.3.1 DDoS Attack on Mempools 210

10.3.2 Data Collection for Evaluation 210

10.4 Threat Model 211

10.5 Attack Procedure 212

10.5.1 The Distribution Phase 214

10.5.2 The Attack Phase 214

10.5.3 Attack Cost 214

10.6 Countering the Mempool Attack 215

10.6.1 Fee-based Mempool Design 216

10.6.2 Age-based Countermeasures 221

10.7 Experiment and Results 224

10.8 Conclusion 227

References 227

11 Preventing Digital Currency Miners from Launching Attacks Against Mining Pools Using a Reputation-based Paradigm 233
Mehrdad Nojoumian, Arash Golchubian, Laurent Njilla, Kevin Kwiat, and Charles A. Kamhoua

11.1 Introduction 233

11.2 Preliminaries 234

11.2.1 Digital Currencies: Terminologies and Mechanics 234

11.2.2 Game Theory: Basic Notions and Definitions 235

11.3 Literature Review 236

11.4 Reputation-based Mining Model and Setting 238

11.5 Mining in a Reputation-based Model 240

11.5.1 Prevention of the Re-entry Attack 240

11.5.2 Technical Discussion on Detection Mechanisms 241

11.5.3 Colluding Miner’s Dilemma 243

11.5.4 Repeated Mining Game 244

11.5.5 Colluding Miners’ Preferences 245

11.5.6 Colluding Miners’ Utilities 245

11.6 Evaluation of Our Model Using Game-theoretical Analyses 246

11.7 Concluding Remarks 248

Acknowledgment 249

References 249

Part IV Blockchain Implementation 253

12 Private Blockchain Configurations for Improved IoT Security 255
Adriaan Larmuseau and Devu Manikantan Shila

12.1 Introduction 255

12.2 Blockchain-enabled Gateway 257

12.2.1 Advantages 257

12.2.2 Limitations 258

12.2.3 Private Ethereum Gateways for Access Control 259

12.2.4 Evaluation 262

12.3 Blockchain-enabled Smart End Devices 263

12.3.1 Advantages 263

12.3.2 Limitations 264

12.3.3 Private Hyperledger Blockchain-enabled Smart Sensor Devices 264

12.3.4 Evaluation 269

12.4 Related Work 270

12.5 Conclusion 271

References 271

13 Blockchain Evaluation Platform 275
Peter Foytik and Sachin S. Shetty

13.1 Introduction 275

13.1.1 Architecture 276

13.1.2 Distributed Ledger 276

13.1.3 Participating Nodes 277

13.1.4 Communication 277

13.1.5 Consensus 278

13.2 Hyperledger Fabric 279

13.2.1 Node Types 279

13.2.2 Docker 280

13.2.3 Hyperledger Fabric Example Exercise 281

13.2.4 Running the First Network 281

13.2.5 Running the Kafka Network 286

13.3 Measures of Performance 291

13.3.1 Performance Metrics With the Proof-of-Stake Simulation 293

13.3.2 Performance Measures With the Hyperledger Fabric Example 296

13.4 Simple Blockchain Simulation 300

13.5 Blockchain Simulation Introduction 303

13.5.1 Methodology 304

13.5.2 Simulation Integration With Live Blockchain 304

13.5.3 Simulation Integration With Simulated Blockchain 306

13.5.4 Verification and Validation 306

13.5.5 Example 307

13.6 Conclusion and Future Work 309

References 310

14 Summary and Future Work 311
Sachin S. Shetty, Laurent Njilla, and Charles A. Kamhoua

14.1 Introduction 311

14.2 Blockchain and Cloud Security 312

14.3 Blockchain and IoT Security 312

14.4 Blockchain Security and Privacy 314

14.5 Experimental Testbed and Performance Evaluation 316

14.6 The Future 316

Index 319

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