The blockchain is the underlying technology of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, and it has created much excitement in the technology and research communities. A blockchain is a distributed ledger collectively maintained by a peer-to-peer network of participants who in Bitcoin are known as miners. This key innovation enables cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin to operate in a decentralized manner with no intermediaries such as financial institutions. But the blockchain can be used to record things other than cryptocurrency transactions. While many of the concepts of Bitcoin build on what have been around since the 1980s and 1990s, the designer(s) of it have made important assumptions that make it work along with the use of an incentive protocol, leading to a major breakthrough from traditional academic thinking. In this paper, we present the state-of-the-art of blockchain and cryptocurrencies along with research challenges and opportunities that would be of interest to researchers getting into this exciting field. KEYWORDS bitcoin, blockchain, cryptocurrency, distributed systems 1 Internet Technology Letters. 2019;2:e93.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/itl2

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Cloud computing is a widely expanding and rapidly adopted field of technology. The ability to grant significantly more computational resources than a single machine allows, through use of virtual machines, is incredibly helpful to enterprises that need to meet the demands of hundreds of thousands of concurrent users. However, just as these resources can be used for meaningful purposes, they can also be used for malicious attacks. In this paper, we present the legal and ethical challenges of hacking in the cloud citing specific cyber laws from Canada and the United Arab Emirates, along with the terms of use of cloud service providers. We also present the results of a legal SYN (synchronization) flood attack experiment, utilizing packets with spoofed source internet protocol addresses to determine if this attack works on a cloud service provider. We offer recommendations based on whether or not the cloud platform provides sufficient utility to be used in aiding hackers with their tasks, or if the legal and ethical issues surrounding the implementations ruin any opportunities before development even begins. KEYWORDSclouding computing, ethical and legal issues, hacking, IP spoofing 1 Internet Technology Letters. 2019;2:e84.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/itl2