Computer Sciences Commons^™

Medilink: A Secure Blockchain Framework For Multi-Institutional Healthcare, Jorge Castillo, Qian Chen

Informatics and Engineering Systems Faculty Publications

The use of Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) in the healthcare industry has proven to be critical for storing highly sensitive information. Disseminating and protecting healthcare data poses major challenges for the current healthcare information system. Blockchain technology provides solutions to these challenges with its inherited properties, such as decentralization, immutability, and transparency. This provides a unique opportunity to improve data sharing among stakeholders. We propose MediLink, a blockchain-based framework for secure collaborative medical storage. MediLink is designed to (1) protect EMR data from cyber attacks, (2) share healthcare information of patients with different stakeholders, and (3) enable the Internet of …

Phr-Nft: Decentralized Blockchain Framework With Hyperledger And Nfts For Secure And Transparent Patient Health Records, Huwida E. Said, Nedaa B. Al Barghuthi, Sulafa M. Badi, Faiza Hashim, Shini Girija

All Works

Blockchain technology holds significant promise for healthcare by enhancing the security and integrity of patient health records (PHRs) through decentralized storage and transparent access. However, it has substantial limitations, including problems with scalability, high transaction costs, privacy concerns, and intricate stakeholder access management. This study presents PHR-NFT, a novel framework that strengthens PHR privacy by utilizing Hyperledger Fabric and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to address these issues. PHR-NFT improves privacy and communication by letting patients keep control of their medical records while permitting temporary, permission-based access by medical professionals. PHR-NFT offers a transparent solution that increases trust among healthcare stakeholders through …

Developing A Framework For Digital Twin Data Quality And Security Controls, Ahmad Abdelbaset Hassan

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

This thesis is concerned with the data quality and security of the digital twin and how it is going to impact its adoption, trustworthiness, and potential for real-world applications. By addressing the potential vulnerabilities and ensuring the integrity of data, this research aims to contribute to the development of robust and trustworthy digital twin standards and policies that is going to complement the existing international standards across different domains. Moreover, it underscores the important need to establish robust standards to ensure the successful and secure deployment of digital twins across industries. Previous research, while valuable, may not have fully addressed …

Distributed Software Build Assurance For Software Supply Chain Integrity, Ken Lew, Arijet Sarker, Simeon Wuthier, Jinoh Kim

Faculty Publications

Computing and networking are increasingly implemented in software. We design and build a software build assurance scheme detecting if there have been injections or modifications in the various steps in the software supply chain, including the source code, compiling, and distribution. Building on the reproducible build and software bill of materials (SBOM), our work is distinguished from previous research in assuring multiple software artifacts across the software supply chain. Reproducible build, in particular, enables our scheme, as our scheme requires the software materials/artifacts to be consistent across machines with the same operating system/specifications. Furthermore, we use blockchain to deliver the …

Privacy Risks And Regulatory Challenges In Smart Grids And Renewable Energy Systems, Mikołaj Rajca

internetowy Kwartalnik Antymonopolowy i Regulacyjny (internet Quarterly on Antitrust and Regulation)

Smart grid technologies are central to the global shift towards a more efficient and sustainable energy infrastructure, integrating advanced digital systems with traditional power networks. While these technologies offer significant benefits, including enhanced energy management and the seamless integration of renewable energy sources, they also introduce complex privacy challenges. The extensive data collection and real-time communication capabilities inherent in smart grids raise concerns over consumer privacy, data breaches, and cybersecurity threats. This paper critically examines these privacy risks within the context of evolving regulatory frameworks such as the GDPR, NIS2 Directive, and the forthcoming EU AI Act. The discussion emphasizes …

Detecting Anomalies In Blockchain Transactions Using Machine Learning Classifiers And Explainability Analysis, Mohammad Hasan, Mohammad Shahriar Rahman, Helge Janicke, Iqbal H. Sarker

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

As the use of blockchain for digital payments continues to rise, it becomes susceptible to various malicious attacks. Successfully detecting anomalies within blockchain transactions is essential for bolstering trust in digital payments. However, the task of anomaly detection in blockchain transaction data is challenging due to the infrequent occurrence of illicit transactions. Although several studies have been conducted in the field, a limitation persists: the lack of explanations for the model's predictions. This study seeks to overcome this limitation by integrating explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques and anomaly rules into tree-based ensemble classifiers for detecting anomalous Bitcoin transactions. The shapley …

Pias: Privacy-Preserving Incentive Announcement System Based On Blockchain For Internet Of Vehicles, Yonghua Zhan, Yang Yang, Hongju Cheng, Xiangyang Luo, Zhuangshuang Guan, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

More vehicles are connecting to the Internet of Things (IoT), transforming Vehicle Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) into the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), providing a more environmentally friendly and safer driving experience. Vehicular announcement networks show promise in vehicular communication applications. However, two major issues arise when establishing such a system. Firstly, user privacy cannot be guaranteed when messages are forwarded anonymously, thus the reliability of these messages is in question. Secondly, users often lack interest in responding to announcements. To address these problems, we introduce a Blockchain-based incentive announcement system called PIAS. This system enables anonymous message commitment in a …

Exploring The Integration Of Blockchain In Iot Use Cases: Challenges And Opportunities, Ivannah George

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Blockchain and The Internet of Things (IoT) is a significant paradigm which has gained traction in today’s digital age as two complimentary technologies. The combination of IoT's connectivity with blockchain's security creates new opportunities and solves problems associated with centralized systems. This culminating project aims to delve deeper into the integration of blockchain technology in IoT applications based on select use cases to uncover potential benefits and significant challenges of blockchain integration across different sectors. The research objectives to be addressed are: (RO1) How emerging vulnerabilities manifest in the implementation of blockchain within current IoT ecosystems. (RO2) How current opportunities …

Leveraging Blockchain For Trust Enhancement In Decentralized Marketplaces: A Reputation System Perspective, Meshari Mohammd Aljohani

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Centralized marketplaces provide reliable reputation services through a central authority, but this raises concerns about single points of failure, user privacy, and data security. Decentralized marketplaces have emerged to address these issues by enhancing user privacy and transparency and eliminating single points of failure. However, decentralized marketplaces face the challenge of maintaining user trust without a centralized authority. Current blockchain-based marketplaces rely on subjective buyer feedback. Additionally, the transparency in these systems can deter honest reviews due to fear of seller retaliation. To address these issues, we propose a trust and reputation system using blockchain and smart contracts. Our system …

Unveiling The Dynamics Of Ai Applications: A Review Of Reviews Using Scientometrics And Bertopic Modeling, Raghu Raman, Debidutta Pattnaik, Laurie Hughes, Prema Nedungadi

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

In a world that has rapidly transformed through the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), our systematic review, guided by the PRISMA protocol, investigates a decade of AI research, revealing insights into its evolution and impact. Our study, examining 3,767 articles, has drawn considerable attention, as evidenced by an impressive 63,577 citations, underscoring the scholarly community's profound engagement. Our study reveals a collaborative landscape with 18,189 contributing authors, reflecting a robust network of researchers advancing AI and machine learning applications. Review categories focus on systematic reviews and bibliometric analyses, indicating an increasing emphasis on comprehensive literature synthesis and quantitative analysis. The …

Predicting Iot Distributed Ledger Fraud Transactions With A Lightweight Gan Network, Charles Rawlins, Jagannathan Sarangapani

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Decision-making and consensus in traditional blockchain protocols is formulated as a repeated Bernoulli trial that solves a computationally intense lottery puzzle, called Proof-of-Work (PoW) in Bitcoin. This approach has shown robustness through practice but does not scale with increasing network size and generation of new transactions. Resource constrained Internet of Things (IoT) networks are incompatible with full computation of schemes like Bitcoin's PoW. Our effort proposes a first step towards an alternative consensus using machine learning-based decision-making with prediction of fraud transactions to alleviate need for intense computation. To improve base approval probabilities for fraud detection in an ideal security …

Attribute-Based Fine-Grained Access Control Using Verifiable Credentials, Srinivasa Dumpa

Student Theses

In the era of digital transformation, ensuring secure and privacy-preserving access control mechanisms is of paramount importance. Traditional identity-based access control systems often fall short in providing granular control and user autonomy over digital identities. This thesis presents a novel approach to access control by leveraging the power of verifiable credentials and attribute-based access control. The proposed system introduces a decentralized and user-centric framework that enables fine-grained access control based on specific attributes encapsulated within verifiable credentials. These tamper-evident digital credentials, stored in a user's digital wallet, contain a rich set of attributes that can be selectively disclosed to grant …

Technology And Homelessness: How Website Design And Blockchain Technology Could Impact The Unhoused, Casey Pratt

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Although technology could be used to combat inequality, it is instead increasing it. This paper discusses how the unhoused population suffers at the hand of technological inequality despite being relatively offline. It presents theories on how this would change if we reapproached how technology is used to assist the unhoused. It suggests implementing blockchain as a resource as well as modifying the websites built to assist in accessing benefits. Employees at shelters are interviewed for this paper about their experiences with using digital resources to rehouse and restabilize the vulnerable. They are asked how the sites can be improved for …

Fully Automated Selfish Mining Analysis In Efficient Proof Systems Blockchains, Krishnendu Chatterjee, Amirali Ebrahimzadeh, Mehrdad Karrabi, Krzysztof Pietrzak, Michelle Yeo, Dorde Zikelic

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We study selfish mining attacks in longest-chain blockchains like Bitcoin, but where the proof of work is replaced with efficient proof systems - like proofs of stake or proofs of space - and consider the problem of computing an optimal selfish mining attack which maximizes expected relative revenue of the adversary, thus minimizing the chain quality. To this end, we propose a novel selfish mining attack that aims to maximize this objective and formally model the attack as a Markov decision process (MDP). We then present a formal analysis procedure which computes an ϵ-tight lower bound on the optimal expected …

Sustainable Accounting: The Benefits And Challenges Of Its Implementation, Collin Eckstein

University Honors College

This thesis is centered around the idea that sustainability is a necessary component within the world. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors are key components of analyzing sustainable practices. Although accountants have historically focused on financial reporting, they now have the added function of sustainable accounting as environmental implications are an area of concern for companies. A substantial component of this thesis centers around analyzing how ESG factors contribute to an organization’s financial performance. It also observes how comprehensive sustainability reports impact investor decisions and examines the challenges that auditors face when providing assurance for sustainability initiatives. Furthermore, it examines …

Monero: Powering Anonymous Digital Currency Transactions, Jake Braddy

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Cryptocurrencies rely on a distributed public ledger (record of transactions) in order to perform their intended functions. However, the public’s ability to audit the network is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness: Anyone can see what address sent currency, and to whom the currency was sent. If cryptocurrency is ever going to take some of the responsibility of fiat currency, then there needs to be a certain level of confidentiality. Thus far, Monero has come out on top as the preferred currency for embodying the ideas of privacy and confidentiality. Through numerous cryptographic procedures, Monero is able to obfuscate …

Secure Multiparty Protocols On Blockchain With Fairness And Scalability, Joshua Holmes

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Secure multiparty computation is a major field of research in modern cryptography. It allows for the creation of a protocol that maintains the privacy of the inputs and ensures that violation of the protocol results in no undue benefit to the violator or detriment to an honest party. These protocols can be used in many fields. In this dissertation, we explore the application of the mechanisms of secure party computation in the context of peer-to-peer lending, fair exchange with cryptocurrencies, consensus, and electronic voting. In all these areas, honesty of execution and fairness in the outcome should be assured or …

A Reputation System For Provably-Robust Decision Making In Iot Blockchain Networks, Charles C. Rawlins, Sarangapani Jagannathan, Venkata Sriram Siddhardh Nadendla

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Blockchain systems have been successful in discerning truthful information from interagent interaction amidst possible attackers or conflicts, which is crucial for the completion of nontrivial tasks in distributed networking. However, the state-of-the-art blockchain protocols are limited to resource-rich applications where reliably connected nodes within the network are equipped with significant computing power to run lottery-based proof-of-work (pow) consensus. The purpose of this work is to address these challenges for implementation in a severely resource-constrained distributed network with internet of things (iot) devices. The contribution of this work is a novel lightweight alternative, called weight-based reputation (wbr) scheme, to classify new …

A Trustworthy Self-Sovereign Data And Identity Management Framework, Efat Fathalla

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Data is a fundamental building block in the digital world, providing a basis for decision making and growth across numerous applications. In our modern world, we have become accustomed to collecting data on everything, including devices, machines, and people. The increased value of such data has led to aggressive harvesting mechanisms that prioritize data collection, storage, and pervasiveness while often disregarding security, privacy concerns, and compliance with regulations and standards. Such a pervasive attitude towards data has resulted in a loss of control, prompting concerns among individuals and mobilizing the scientific community towards advocating for data self-sovereignty.

Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) …

Blockchain Applications In Higher Education Based On The Nist Cybersecurity Framework, Brady Lund Ph.D.

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

This paper investigates the integration of blockchain technology into core systems within institutions of higher education, utilizing the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework as a guiding framework. It supplies definitions of key terminology including blockchain, consensus mechanisms, decentralized identity, and smart contracts, and examines the application of secure blockchain across various educational functions such as enrollment management, degree auditing, and award processing. Each facet of the NIST Framework is utilized to explore the integration of blockchain technology and address persistent security concerns. The paper contributes to the literature by defining blockchain technology applications and opportunities within …

The Microverse: A Task-Oriented Edge-Scale Metaverse, Qian Qu, Mohsen Hatami, Ronghua Xu, Deeraj Nagothu, Yu Chen, Xiaohua Li, Erik Blasch, Erika Ardiles-Cruz, Genshe Chen

Michigan Tech Publications

Over the past decade, there has been a remarkable acceleration in the evolution of smart cities and intelligent spaces, driven by breakthroughs in technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), edge–fog–cloud computing, and machine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI). As society begins to harness the full potential of these smart environments, the horizon brightens with the promise of an immersive, interconnected 3D world. The forthcoming paradigm shift in how we live, work, and interact owes much to groundbreaking innovations in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR), blockchain, and digital twins (DTs). However, realizing the expansive digital vista …

Robust Permissioned Blockchain Consensus For Unstable Communication In Fanet, Zihao Wang, Hang Wang, Zhuowen Li, Xinghua Li, Yinbin Miao, Yanbing Ren, Yunwei Wang, Zhe Ren, Deng, Robert H.

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The utilization of blockchain technology as a distributed information sharing system has gained widespread adoption across various domains. However, its application to Flying Ad-Hoc Network (FANET), characterized by severe packet loss, poses significant challenges. The high packet loss rates in FANETs can result in decreased consensus success rates and negatively impact information sharing consistency and efficiency. In this paper, we proposed RoUBC, a novel consensus scheme for Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANET), which is based on the Raft protocol and is designed to address the challenges posed by the severe packet loss network in FANET. The proposed scheme consists of two …

Towards Blockchain-Based Secure Bgp Routing, Challenges And Future Research Directions, Qiong Yang, Li Ma, Shanshan Tu, Sami Ullah, Muhammad Waqas, Hisham Alasmary

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standard inter-domain routing protocol for the Internet that conveys network layer reachability information and establishes routes to different destinations. The BGP protocol exhibits security design defects, such as an unconditional trust mechanism and the default acceptance of BGP route announcements from peers by BGP neighboring nodes, easily triggering prefix hijacking, path forgery, route leakage, and other BGP security threats. Meanwhile, the traditional BGP security mechanism, relying on a public key infrastructure, faces issues like a single point of failure and a single point of trust. The decentralization, anti-tampering, and traceability advantages of blockchain offer …

Trading Cloud Computing Stocks Using Sma, Xianrong Zheng, Lingyu Li

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

As cloud computing adoption becomes mainstream, the cloud services market offers vast profits. Moreover, serverless computing, the next stage of cloud computing, comes with huge economic potential. To capitalize on this trend, investors are interested in trading cloud stocks. As high-growth technology stocks, investing in cloud stocks is both rewarding and challenging. The research question here is how a trading strategy will perform on cloud stocks. As a result, this paper employs an effective method—Simple Moving Average (SMA)—to trade cloud stocks. To evaluate its performance, we conducted extensive experiments with real market data that spans over 23 years. Results show …

Designing A Blockchain-Empowered Telehealth Artifact For Decentralized Identity Management And Trustworthy Communication: Interdisciplinary Approach, Xueping Liang, Nabid Alam, Tahmina Sultana, Eranga Bandara, Sachin Shetty

VMASC Publications

Background: Telehealth played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to function as an essential component of health care. Existing platforms cannot ensure privacy and prevent cyberattacks.

Objective: The main objectives of this study are to understand existing cybersecurity issues in identity management and trustworthy communication processes in telehealth platforms and to design a software architecture integrated with blockchain to improve security and trustworthiness with acceptable performance.

Methods: We improved personal information security in existing telehealth platforms by adopting an innovative interdisciplinary approach combining design science, social science, and computer science in the health care domain, with prototype …

Blockchain For Computational Integrity And Privacy, Rahul Raj

Theses and Dissertations

This study proposes a blockchain based system that utilizes fully homomorphic encryption to provide security of data in use as well as computational integrity. This is achieved by leveraging the attributes of blockchain which provides availability and data integrity combined with homomorphic encryption that provides confidentiality. The proposed system is designed to perform statistical operations, including mean, median and variance, on encrypted data, thus providing confidentiality of data while in use. The computations are performed on the smart contract, residing on the blockchain which provides computational integrity. The results indicate that it is possible to perform fully homomorphic computations on …

Evaluation Of A Blockchain-Based Prescription System And Data Source For National Research And Development, Sean Chan, Aedin Clay, Lance Tan, Christian E. Pulmano

Department of Information Systems & Computer Science Faculty Publications

In the Philippines, healthcare providers, government agencies, and research institutions use data from patient prescriptions to generate reports for health planning and decision-making. However, current e-prescription systems have vulnerabilities, including erroneous information, hacking attempts, a single point of failure, and medical fraud. In addition to affecting the quality of data reporting, these issues violate a patient's rights to data privacy. One promising solution is a blockchain-based prescription system. Blockchain's immutable ledger accurately traces medical fraud and erroneous information, while its decentralized nature reduces the impact of failures. Performance is an important consideration, as healthcare systems need to be scalable and …

Towards Trust And Reputation As A Service In Society 5.0, Stephan Olariu, Ravi Mukkamala, Meshari Aljohani

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Our paper was inspired by the recent Society 5.0 initiative of the Japanese Government which seeks to create a sustainable human-centric society by putting to work recent advances in technology. One of the key challenges in implementing Society 5.0 is providing trusted and secure services for everyone to use. Motivated by this challenge, this paper makes three contributions that we summarize as follows: Our first main contribution is to propose a novel blockchain and smart contract-based trust and reputation service design to reduce the uncertainty associated with buyer feedback in marketplaces that we expect to see in Society 5.0. Our …

Autonomous Strike Uavs In Support Of Homeland Security Missions: Challenges And Preliminary Solutions, Meshari Aljohani, Ravi Mukkamala, Stephan Olariu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming crucial tools in modern homeland security applications, primarily because of their cost-effectiveness, risk reduction, and ability to perform a wider range of activities. This study focuses on the use of autonomous UAVs to conduct, as part of homeland security applications, strike missions against high-value terrorist targets. Owing to developments in ledger technology, smart contracts, and machine learning, activities formerly carried out by professionals or remotely flown UAVs are now feasible. Our study provides the first in-depth analysis of the challenges and preliminary solutions for the successful implementation of an autonomous UAV mission. Specifically, we …

Reliable Emergency Rescue Model Of Uavs Based On Blockchain, Mengyao Du, Kai Xu, Miao Zhang, Xiang Fu, Quanjun Yin

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Natural disasters may unpredictably disrupt ground communication infrastructure and transportation systems, and UAVs emergency response can deal with such uncertainties and highly dynamic scenarios. Aiming at the robustness requirements of decentralized rescue systems. UAV emergency rescue chain (UERChain) based on blockchain technology is proposed. By deploying UAV backbone nodes within a layered local network, the smart contracts for managing reputation considering UAV social relationships are designed. The blockchain is employed as a trust mechanism to realize the trustworthy interactions among distributed UAVs. Experimental results show that, UERChain has higher robustness, and within controllable resource constraints, the reputation management and …