Blockchain technology overview

Yaga, Dylan J.; Mell, Peter; Roby, Nik; Scarfone, Karen

doi:10.6028/nist.ir.8202

Cited by 985 publications

(598 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Otherwise, if only particular nodes are allowed to do it, it is permissioned. More details about the categorisation can be found in the NIST report [15]. From now on, we refer to these privileged nodes as miners in the paper.…”

Section: Blockchain In a Nutshellmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Blockchain-Enabled Searchable Encryption

Tang

2020

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Distributed Leger Technologies (DLTs), most notably Blockchain technologies, bring decentralised platforms that eliminate a single trusted third party and avoid the notorious single point of failure vulnerability. Since Nakamoto's Bitcoin cryptocurrency system, an enormous number of decentralised applications have been proposed on top of these technologies, aiming at more transparency and trustworthiness than their traditional counterparts. These applications spread over a lot of areas, e.g. financial services, healthcare, transportation, supply chain management, and cloud computing. While Blockchain brings transparency and decentralised trust intuitively due to the consensus of a (very large) group of nodes (or, miners), it introduces very subtle implications for other desirable properties such as privacy. In this work, we demonstrate these subtle implications for Blockchain-based searchable encryption solutions, which are one specific use case of cloud computing services. These solutions rely on Blockchain to achieve both the standard privacy property and the new fairness property, which requires that search operations are carried out faithfully and are rewarded accordingly. We show that directly replacing the server in an existing searchable encryption solution with a Blockchain will cause undesirable operational cost, privacy loss, and security vulnerabilities. The analysis results indicate that a dedicated server is still needed to achieve the desired privacy guarantee. To this end, we propose two frameworks which can be instantiated based on most existing searchable encryption schemes. Through analysing these two frameworks, we affirmatively show that a carefully engineered Blockchain-based solution can achieve the desired fairness property while preserving the privacy guarantee of the original searchable encryption scheme simultaneously.

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Section: Blockchain In a Nutshellmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Blockchain-Enabled Searchable Encryption

Tang

2020

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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“…We invite the readers, who have little or no knowledge of blockchain technology and who wish to understand at a high level how it works, to read Blockchain Technology Overview NISTIR 8202 [11]. It defines blockchain as "tamper evident and tamper resistant digital ledgers implemented in a distributed fashion (i.e., without a central repository) and usually without a central authority (i.e., a bank, company or government).…”

Section: Blockchains and Smart Contractsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Blockchains have unique properties and underlying governance implications that must be considered while designing an identity management system or deciding on one to use. Blockchain Technology Overview NIST-IR 8202 [11] in Section 7.2 Users Involved in Blockchain Governance states: "the software developers, publishing nodes, and blockchain network users all play a part in the blockchain network governance". Below are some key considerations.…”

Section: Underlying Blockchain Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A data structure where the data is hashed and combined until there is a singular root hash that represents the entire structure. [11] Mintable Refers to the ability of a digital token to be created.…”

Section: Merkle Treementioning

confidence: 99%

“…An individual system within the blockchain network. [11] Non-Fungible Refers to something that is not replaceable or interchangeable.…”

Section: Nodementioning

confidence: 99%

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A Taxonomic Approach to Understanding Emerging Blockchain Identity Management Systems

2019

Preprint

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Identity management systems (IDMSs) are widely used to provision user identities while managing authentication, authorization, and data sharing both within organizations as well as on the Internet more broadly. Traditional identity systems typically suffer from single points of failure, lack of interoperability, and privacy issues such as encouraging mass data collection and user tracking. Blockchain technology has the potential to support novel data ownership and governance models with built-in control and consent mechanisms, which may benefit both users and businesses by alleviating these concerns; as a result, blockchain-based IDMSs are beginning to proliferate. This work categorizes these systems into a taxonomy based on differences in architecture, governance models, and other salient features. We provide context for the taxonomy by describing related terms, emerging standards, and use cases, while highlighting relevant security and privacy considerations. AudienceThis publication is designed for readers with some knowledge of blockchain technology who wish to understand at a high level how blockchain identity management systems work. It is not intended to be a technical guide; the discussion of the technology provides a conceptual understanding. Note that some examples, figures, and tables are simplified to fit the audience. Executive SummaryIdentity management systems allow one to provision identities to users, while managing authentication, authorization, and data sharing both within organizations as well as on the Internet. With traditional identity management, organizations usually store the credentials (e.g., a password) of each user they interact with, or with federated models, they use a third party to store this information. This creates interoperability, security, and privacy concerns due to the privileged position of the entity that controls the identity information.A possible solution to these issues is found in the use of blockchain technologies for identity management: they can reduce, or even remove, the need for a third party. At a high-level, they can transform data governance and ownership models, and benefit both individual users and businesses. More specifically, it can enable users to control their data and share select personal information to relying parties. It can also enable businesses to streamline their operations by relying on verified user information without having to maintain the infrastructure themselves.A large number of blockchain-based identity management approaches are currently being explored, implemented, and commercialized. Many of them use, or plan to use, smart contracts, the privacy capabilities gained from zero-knowledge protocols, and other scalability solutions atop the underlying blockchain. This is an emerging field and the features, capabilities, security, and privacy of these proposed systems are often unclear.Identity is a far-reaching topic, and the systems being designed to support it can take architectural forms that are both on-chain and off-chain, and fo...

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