Security Concerns at Different Phases of Networks through Blockchain Technology

Abstract

A blockchain is a peer-to-peer, distributed, and decentralized network that generates a distributed ledger that provides immutability, transparency, and traceability. Each node has a copy of the distributed ledger in which data is formed as a block, and each block is connected to the preceding block in the chain. A distributed ledger is where data is recorded, and maintained, and endlessly growing transactions are recorded in an ordered manner across multiple computers. Many researchers have applied many approaches but still, there is a scope for improvement to achieve better security, privacy, transparency, efficiency, reliability, throughput, and scalability in different phases in an untrusted environment. Blockchain is used for the security purposes of devices, data, and users with different applications such as vehicles, IoT, industrial, healthcare, voting, and digital transactions. The presence of malicious nodes can degrade the performance of the system, and the validation of the block that corresponds to the selected miners allows it to be maliciously put onto the blockchain. So, to eliminate these issues used the incentive mechanisms that are a combination of DPSO and M-ITA algorithms to verify miners and blocks using blockchain technology in vehicular networks. The vehicles on the road side units share a lot of information through communication that ensures driver safety and service quality. The DPSO algorithm validates the block whereas the MITA algorithm to check the miner’s is trustworthiness. The decentralized approach of this work increased the trust and utility of miner’s upto 65% and 20% respectively whereas the compromised miners are reduced upto 44%. Many researchers have proposed encryption schemes to protect data, but they have also led to inadequacies in most of the proposed approaches like data privacy, centralize control, security, corrupt, processing time. Encryption technology requires more time to manage keys and encrypt and decrypt data, which can result in increased vulnerability to eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks. The CP-ABE blockchain-based encryption technique is proposed to secure the data in untrusted environment by employing IPFS cloud storage to minimize user effort. The decentralized approach of this work reduces the encryption and decryption time by 23% and 37% respectively when compared with the existing approach. Furthermore, a decentralized IPFS cloud server is expected to guarantee integrity, authenticity, and confidentiality. To enhance the system's throughput, a user authentication mechanism that combines PKI and ECC algorithms is being implemented, improves the user’s authenticity, and reduced the latency using blockchain technology in industrial applications. PKI gives the digital certificate to the authenticated users only for a limited period after that gives permission to access the industrial applications. ECC used to distribute and manage the keys because of centralized authority can be overwhelmed. Every time checks the authentication of users if not authorized then revokes the certificate immediately and stops the interface with IIoTs. The performance of the proposed approach is better when compared to the existing approach that increased the systems throughput and users authenticity upto 73% and 93% respectively, and reduced the latency upto 6.77% in industrial applications.