BLOCKGRID: A BLOCKCHAIN-MEDIATED CYBER-PHYSICAL INSTRUCTIONAL PLATFORM

Includes supplementary material, which may be found at https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/66767Blockchain technology has garnered significant attention for its disruptive potential in several domains of national security interest. For the United States government to meet the challenge of incorporating blockchain technology into its IT infrastructure and cyber warfare strategy, personnel must be educated about blockchain technology and its applications. This thesis presents both the design and prototype implementation for a blockchain-mediated cyber-physical system called a BlockGrid. The system consists of a cluster of microcomputers that form a simple smart grid controlled by smart contracts on a private blockchain. The microcomputers act as private blockchain nodes and are programmed to activate microcomputer-attached circuits in response to smart-contract transactions. LEDs are used as visible circuit elements that serve as indicators of the blockchain’s activity and allow demonstration of the technology to observers. Innovations in networking configuration and physical layout allow the prototype to be highly portable and pre-configured for use upon assembly. Implementation options allow the use of BlockGrid in a variety of instructional settings, thus increasing its potential benefit to educators.Civilian, CyberCorps: Scholarship for ServiceApproved for public release. distribution is unlimite

DESIGNING BLOCKCHAIN BASED NON-FUNGIBLE TOKEN CERTIFICATE SHARING FRAMEWORK

The sharing of academic achievement certificates and credentials requires enhanced security measures to ensure faultless and fraud-free practices, while also prioritizing data trust and user privacy. It is crucial to provide convenience and secure control over access rights based on user roles. Traditionally, educational institutions issue hard copy certificates to students who have fulfilled the prerequisites. However, when it comes to sharing validated certificates, especially for students pursuing higher studies, different issuers follow varied approaches. The traditional method of mailing certificates involves time-consuming and costly back-and-forth involvement with universities. Similarly, email-based approaches raise concerns regarding trust and authenticity. In all of these approach there exist intermediaries that are need for verification and validation. Existing sharing platforms restrict student's control over their data and limit the validation process. Moreover, once a certificate is shared through these methods, students often lose control over its further usage and distribution, which is not an ideal approach. Until recently, there was no standardized approach to accurately monitor and verify the sharing of certificates, including the sender, recipient, and conditions. However, with the emergence of distributed ledger technologies, specifically designed for NFTs, a decentralized peer-to-peer network has now become the most efficient solution to address these challenges. This technology enables secure and verifiable sharing of certificates, ensuring transparency, trust, and greater control for students over their credentials. By utilizing NFTs, students can retain ownership and control over their certificates even after sharing them, thereby eliminating the concerns of loss of control and unauthorized distribution. To achieve this, a distributed application layer was added on top of the centralized system to create a more feasible and practical approach. This study focuses on utilizing a permission-less blockchain, specifically the public network of the Ethereum blockchain, to develop a secure data sharing framework. The research proposes an architecture and delves into the necessary components and factors to consider during the design and implementation of the system. The aim is to provide students with complete ownership and permanent access to their digital certificates, which are verified by the university and accepted by employers. This framework supports immutability, authenticity, enhanced security, trusted records and is a promising means to share academic certificates involving students, universities and employers. The framework is evaluated via a user study. The extended Technology Acceptance Model(TAM) and a Trust-Privacy Security Model are used to evaluate the usability of the NFT-framework. The evaluation allows uncovering the role of different factors affecting user intention to adopt certificate-sharing platforms. The result of the evaluation point to guidelines and methods for embedding privacy, user transparency and drivers of using the application

Next Generation Business Ecosystems: Engineering Decentralized Markets, Self-Sovereign Identities and Tokenization

Digital transformation research increasingly shifts from studying information systems within organizations towards adopting an ecosystem perspective, where multiple actors co-create value. While digital platforms have become a ubiquitous phenomenon in consumer-facing industries, organizations remain cautious about fully embracing the ecosystem concept and sharing data with external partners. Concerns about the market power of platform orchestrators and ongoing discussions on privacy, individual empowerment, and digital sovereignty further complicate the widespread adoption of business ecosystems, particularly in the European Union. In this context, technological innovations in Web3, including blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies, have emerged as potential catalysts for disrupting centralized gatekeepers and enabling a strategic shift towards user-centric, privacy-oriented next-generation business ecosystems. However, existing research efforts focus on decentralizing interactions through distributed network topologies and open protocols lack theoretical convergence, resulting in a fragmented and complex landscape that inadequately addresses the challenges organizations face when transitioning to an ecosystem strategy that harnesses the potential of disintermediation. To address these gaps and successfully engineer next-generation business ecosystems, a comprehensive approach is needed that encompasses the technical design, economic models, and socio-technical dynamics. This dissertation aims to contribute to this endeavor by exploring the implications of Web3 technologies on digital innovation and transformation paths. Drawing on a combination of qualitative and quantitative research, it makes three overarching contributions: First, a conceptual perspective on \u27tokenization\u27 in markets clarifies its ambiguity and provides a unified understanding of the role in ecosystems. This perspective includes frameworks on: (a) technological; (b) economic; and (c) governance aspects of tokenization. Second, a design perspective on \u27decentralized marketplaces\u27 highlights the need for an integrated understanding of micro-structures, business structures, and IT infrastructures in blockchain-enabled marketplaces. This perspective includes: (a) an explorative literature review on design factors; (b) case studies and insights from practitioners to develop requirements and design principles; and (c) a design science project with an interface design prototype of blockchain-enabled marketplaces. Third, an economic perspective on \u27self-sovereign identities\u27 (SSI) as micro-structural elements of decentralized markets. This perspective includes: (a) value creation mechanisms and business aspects of strategic alliances governing SSI ecosystems; (b) business model characteristics adopted by organizations leveraging SSI; and (c) business model archetypes and a framework for SSI ecosystem engineering efforts. The dissertation concludes by discussing limitations as well as outlining potential avenues for future research. These include, amongst others, exploring the challenges of ecosystem bootstrapping in the absence of intermediaries, examining the make-or-join decision in ecosystem emergence, addressing the multidimensional complexity of Web3-enabled ecosystems, investigating incentive mechanisms for inter-organizational collaboration, understanding the role of trust in decentralized environments, and exploring varying degrees of decentralization with potential transition pathways

A patient agent controlled customized blockchain based framework for internet of things

Although Blockchain implementations have emerged as revolutionary technologies for various industrial applications including cryptocurrencies, they have not been widely deployed to store data streaming from sensors to remote servers in architectures known as Internet of Things. New Blockchain for the Internet of Things models promise secure solutions for eHealth, smart cities, and other applications. These models pave the way for continuous monitoring of patient’s physiological signs with wearable sensors to augment traditional medical practice without recourse to storing data with a trusted authority. However, existing Blockchain algorithms cannot accommodate the huge volumes, security, and privacy requirements of health data. In this thesis, our first contribution is an End-to-End secure eHealth architecture that introduces an intelligent Patient Centric Agent. The Patient Centric Agent executing on dedicated hardware manages the storage and access of streams of sensors generated health data, into a customized Blockchain and other less secure repositories. As IoT devices cannot host Blockchain technology due to their limited memory, power, and computational resources, the Patient Centric Agent coordinates and communicates with a private customized Blockchain on behalf of the wearable devices. While the adoption of a Patient Centric Agent offers solutions for addressing continuous monitoring of patients’ health, dealing with storage, data privacy and network security issues, the architecture is vulnerable to Denial of Services(DoS) and single point of failure attacks. To address this issue, we advance a second contribution; a decentralised eHealth system in which the Patient Centric Agent is replicated at three levels: Sensing Layer, NEAR Processing Layer and FAR Processing Layer. The functionalities of the Patient Centric Agent are customized to manage the tasks of the three levels. Simulations confirm protection of the architecture against DoS attacks. Few patients require all their health data to be stored in Blockchain repositories but instead need to select an appropriate storage medium for each chunk of data by matching their personal needs and preferences with features of candidate storage mediums. Motivated by this context, we advance third contribution; a recommendation model for health data storage that can accommodate patient preferences and make storage decisions rapidly, in real-time, even with streamed data. The mapping between health data features and characteristics of each repository is learned using machine learning. The Blockchain’s capacity to make transactions and store records without central oversight enables its application for IoT networks outside health such as underwater IoT networks where the unattended nature of the nodes threatens their security and privacy. However, underwater IoT differs from ground IoT as acoustics signals are the communication media leading to high propagation delays, high error rates exacerbated by turbulent water currents. Our fourth contribution is a customized Blockchain leveraged framework with the model of Patient-Centric Agent renamed as Smart Agent for securely monitoring underwater IoT. Finally, the smart Agent has been investigated in developing an IoT smart home or cities monitoring framework. The key algorithms underpinning to each contribution have been implemented and analysed using simulators.Doctor of Philosoph

Data Hiding and Its Applications

Data hiding techniques have been widely used to provide copyright protection, data integrity, covert communication, non-repudiation, and authentication, among other applications. In the context of the increased dissemination and distribution of multimedia content over the internet, data hiding methods, such as digital watermarking and steganography, are becoming increasingly relevant in providing multimedia security. The goal of this book is to focus on the improvement of data hiding algorithms and their different applications (both traditional and emerging), bringing together researchers and practitioners from different research fields, including data hiding, signal processing, cryptography, and information theory, among others

Cyber Security of Critical Infrastructures

Critical infrastructures are vital assets for public safety, economic welfare, and the national security of countries. The vulnerabilities of critical infrastructures have increased with the widespread use of information technologies. As Critical National Infrastructures are becoming more vulnerable to cyber-attacks, their protection becomes a significant issue for organizations as well as nations. The risks to continued operations, from failing to upgrade aging infrastructure or not meeting mandated regulatory regimes, are considered highly significant, given the demonstrable impact of such circumstances. Due to the rapid increase of sophisticated cyber threats targeting critical infrastructures with significant destructive effects, the cybersecurity of critical infrastructures has become an agenda item for academics, practitioners, and policy makers. A holistic view which covers technical, policy, human, and behavioural aspects is essential to handle cyber security of critical infrastructures effectively. Moreover, the ability to attribute crimes to criminals is a vital element of avoiding impunity in cyberspace. In this book, both research and practical aspects of cyber security considerations in critical infrastructures are presented. Aligned with the interdisciplinary nature of cyber security, authors from academia, government, and industry have contributed 13 chapters. The issues that are discussed and analysed include cybersecurity training, maturity assessment frameworks, malware analysis techniques, ransomware attacks, security solutions for industrial control systems, and privacy preservation methods