A patient-centric doctor referral model based on hyperledger chaincode

The article examines methods and information technologies aimed at ensuring the secure integration of the Ethereum blockchain with Internet of Things (IoT) systems. The relevance of the study is driven by the rapid development of IoT, which is accompanied by increasing cybersecurity threats, including unauthorized data access, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, device identifier spoofing, and the low transparency of centralized systems. The use of Ethereum blockchain technology, particularly smart contracts, opens new opportunities for creating decentralized security management models for IoT devices, enhancing trust levels, automating processes, and minimizing third-party interference risks. The “Problem statement” section outlines the key challenges in securing IoT networks, including the vulnerabilities of centralized solutions, limited computational resources of devices, and the need to develop autonomous access control systems. The “Analysis of Recent Research and Publications” section summarizes modern approaches to integrating Ethereum blockchain into the IoT field, including tokenized identification mechanisms, access control, and transaction processing using smart contracts. It is noted that leading researchers suggest Layer-2 solutions (state channels, zk-rollups, Plasma) aimed at reducing the load on the main blockchain and improving scalability. The aim of the article is to systematize modern methods of integrating the Ethereum blockchain with IoT and develop recommendations for their implementation, considering the limited resources of devices. The “Research results” section presents a secure IoT system architecture concept based on decentralized account management, local storage of cryptographic keys on devices, the use of optimized transaction signing algorithms, and the introduction of a hybrid data storage model based on IPFS. The proposed model minimizes the risk of unauthorized access, increases transparency in the interaction between IoT devices, and reduces computational resource costs. The “Conclusions and prospects for further research” section emphasizes that the implementation of the Ethereum blockchain in IoT promotes the development of secure decentralized platforms. However, it requires addressing issues such as energy consumption, transaction costs, and optimizing client applications for low-performance devices. Future research should focus on developing effective scalability tools, adapting smart contracts to IoT specifics, and improving integration with cloud computing platforms for storing large data sets.

The convergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), fog computing, and block chain technology has revolutionized contemporary digital ecosystems by making data management decentralized, efficient, and scalable. Nonetheless, this integration poses serious security and privacy threats. IoT devices produce enormous amounts of sensitive data, making them easy targets for cyber attacks, unauthorized access, and data breaches. Classic cloud-based solutions tend to be challenged by latency, bandwidth limitations, and centralized attacks, making the use of fog computing inevitable to decentralize data processing for better responsiveness and decreased dependency on remote cloud servers. While fog computing offers advantages, it also poses new security threats through possible insider attacks and data integrity issues. Block chain technology solves these problems by presenting a tamper-resistant, decentralized ledger that improves trust, security, and transparency for IoT networks. Block chain, via cryptographic authentication, consensus protocols, and smart contracts, ensures the secure transaction of data while alleviating risks against unauthorized data manipulation. Scalability, computational complexity, and energy efficiency are still challenges that need to be met for widespread IoT adoption. This chapter discusses the complex security and privacy problems in IoT, fog, and blockchain networks and examines current threats and countermeasures. Advanced cryptographic methods, secure communication schemes, and access control techniques for strengthening the security of these connected systems are mentioned. It further presents future research directions and trends that will improve a safer, more efficient, and privacy-augmented digital infrastructure.

Блокчейн у системі охорони здоров’я: проблеми правового забезпечення

The rapid advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT) is reshaping industries by enabling seamless communication between devices, real-time data collection, and automation. Given the surge in IoT applications, challenges related to security, scalability, and interoperability have become increasingly critical. This study presents a state-of-the-art software engineering framework designed to address these limitations through the integration of blockchain technology and smart contracts. By leveraging the decentralized, immutable, and transparent nature of blockchain, the proposed framework enhances trust and security within IoT environments. Smart contracts, as secure, self-executing code, facilitate autonomous interactions between IoT devices without relying on centralized control. Additionally, the framework introduces novel strategies for optimizing resource management and data handling efficiency while improving system scalability across distributed networks. The synergistic use of blockchain and smart contracts not only resolves key IoT challenges but also contributes to the development of robust, efficient, and scalable IoT ecosystems. The framework is applicable across diverse domains, including healthcare, smart cities, supply chain management, and industrial automation, fostering innovative, self-governing IoT systems throughout their operational lifecycle.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of sensors that helps collect data 24/7 without human intervention. However, the network may suffer from problems such as the low battery, heterogeneity, and connectivity issues due to the lack of standards. Even though these problems can cause several performance hiccups, security issues need immediate attention because hackers access vital personal and financial information and then misuse it. These security issues can allow hackers to hijack IoT devices and then use them to establish a Botnet to launch a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. Blockchain technology can provide security to IoT devices by providing secure authentication using public keys. Similarly, Smart Contracts (SCs) can improve the performance of the IoT–blockchain network through automation. However, surveyed work shows that the blockchain and SCs do not provide foolproof security; sometimes, attackers defeat these security mechanisms and initiate DDoS attacks. Thus, developers and security software engineers must be aware of different techniques to detect DDoS attacks. In this survey paper, we highlight different techniques to detect DDoS attacks. The novelty of our work is to classify the DDoS detection techniques according to blockchain technology. As a result, researchers can enhance their systems by using blockchain-based support for detecting threats. In addition, we provide general information about the studied systems and their workings. However, we cannot neglect the recent surveys. To that end, we compare the state-of-the-art DDoS surveys based on their data collection techniques and the discussed DDoS attacks on the IoT subsystems. The study of different IoT subsystems tells us that DDoS attacks also impact other computing systems, such as SCs, networking devices, and power grids. Hence, our work briefly describes DDoS attacks and their impacts on the above subsystems and IoT. For instance, due to DDoS attacks, the targeted computing systems suffer delays which cause tremendous financial and utility losses to the subscribers. Hence, we discuss the impacts of DDoS attacks in the context of associated systems. Finally, we discuss Machine-Learning algorithms, performance metrics, and the underlying technology of IoT systems so that the readers can grasp the detection techniques and the attack vectors. Moreover, associated systems such as Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) are a source of good security enhancement for IoT Networks. Thus, we include a detailed discussion of future development encompassing all major IoT subsystems.

When it comes to the use of the Internet of Things (IoT), the healthcare sector is set to become the next frontier of the digital revolution thanks to the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). Due to their weight, importance, and sensitivity, these files must be protected in the strictest manner. Now that blockchain is becoming more widespread, scientists are concentrating on how to use blockchain tactics within healthcare management to improve data security. Nevertheless, owing to the differing needs of these two technologies, such integration is exceptionally complex and demanding. In order to help users, take full control of their data, this study provides an overview of the current state of blockchain platforms for the IoMT by focusing on the difficulties presented by combination systems. This article will examine blockchain's use in healthcare IoT, including supply chain transparency, health data arrangement, smart contracts, and IoT security for remote monitoring. The final portions focus on challenges and potential developments in the future.

There has been a massive growth of Internet of Things (IoT) applications recently for both personal and organization use cases. But an IoT network is vulnerable to many privacy and security concerns. While some researchers have tried to define different access control models for IoT and tried to use blockchain in some cases, the solutions presented to date lacks a flexible and robust access control model that can be used for complex organization and cross-organization resource access scenarios and lacks the scalability and performance needed for IoT. This paper introduces a novel entitlement-based access control model that provides an efficient and secure way to delegate resource access rights to any entity. The solution uses service-oriented approach and a combination of public blockchain (with smart contracts) and local off-chain data for entitlements management and control. To analyze the proposed architecture, a large-scale cross-organization IoT scenario is taken into consideration and some qualitative evaluations are presented while implementation with Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts are currently in progress.

The exponential growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) is being witnessed nowadays in different sectors. This makes IoT data communications more complex and harder to manage. Addressing such a challenge using a centralized model is an ineffective approach and would result in security and privacy difficulties. Technologies such as blockchain provide a potential solution to enable secure and effective management of IoT data communication in a distributed and trustless manner. In this paper, a novel lightweight blockchain-centric IoT architecture is proposed to address effective IoT data communication management. It is based on an event-driven smart contract that enables manageable and trustless IoT data exchange using a simple publish/subscribe model. To maintain system complexity and overhead at a minimum, the design of the proposed system relies on a single smart contract. All the system operations that enable effective IoT data communication among the different parties of the system are defined in the smart contract. There is no direct blockchain–IoT-device interaction, making the system more useable in wide IoT deployments incorporating IoT devices with limited computing and energy resources. A practical Ethereum-based implementation of the system was developed with the ability to simulate different IoT setups. The evaluation results demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed architecture. Considering varying-scale and varying-density experimental setups, reliable and secure data communications were achieved with little latency and resource consumption.

The Internet of things (IoT) is an active, real-world area in need of more investigation. One of the top weaknesses in security challenges that IoTs face, the centralized access control server, which can be a single point of failure. In this paper, Dynamic-IoTrust, a decentralized access control smart contract based aims to overcome distrusted, dynamic, trust and authentication issues for access control in IoT. It also integrates dynamic trust value to evaluate users based on behavior. In particular, the Dynamic-IoTrust contains multiple Main Smart Contract, one Register Contract, and one Judging Contract to achieve efficient distributed access control management. Dynamic-IoTrust provides both static access rights by allowing predefined access control policies and also provides dynamic access rights by checking the trust value and the behavior of the user. The system also provides to detected user misbehavior and make a decision for user trust value and penalty. There are several levels of trusted users to access the IoTs device. Finally, the case study demonstrates the feasibility of the Dynamic-IoTrust model to offer a dynamic decentralized access control system with trust value attribute to evaluate the internal user used IoTs devices.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) grows, there is a pressing need for secure and efficient management of device access rights. This paper presents Ureka, an open system that uses blockchain technology to manage IoT access rights in a transparent and bidirectional way. Ureka consists of a personal private system, a blockchain smart contract system, and a ticket processing system on an IoT device. Each user and IoT device are identified and authenticated through a unique asymmetric key pair, and access to devices is mediated through smart contracts and tickets. Ureka also implements regulation mechanisms to govern user behavior and prevent rule violations. Our evaluation shows that Ureka effectively manages IoT access rights and prevents unauthorized access. The contributions of this paper include the Ureka open standard, the implementation of a transparent and bidirectional smart contract and ticket system, and the regulation mechanisms for governing user behavior.

Blockchain is an emerging technology with broad applications. As an important application of the blockchain, smart contracts can formulate trading rules to manage thousands of virtual currencies. Nowadays, the IoT (Internet of Things) combined with blockchain has become a new trend and smart contract can implement different transaction demands for IoT-blockchain systems. Once there exits vulnerability in the smart contract program, the security of the virtual currency will not be guaranteed. However, ensuring the security of smart contracts is never an easy task. On the one hand, existing smart contracts cannot identify fake users or malicious programs, which is difficult to be regulated at present; on the other hand, smart contracts involving in multiple trading users are very similar to shared-memory concurrent programs. To deal with these problems, this study uses formal verification methods, adopting the Communicating Sequence Processes (CSP) theory to formally model concurrent programs. Then the FDR (Failure Divergence Refinement), a refinement checker or model checker for CSP, is utilized to successfully detect the vulnerability regarding concurrency in one smart contract public in Ethereum. The results show the potential advantage of using CSP and FDR tool to check the vulnerability in smart contracts especially from the perspective of concurrency.

According to the China Annual Report on Personal Information Security, data breaches nationwide will increase by 23% year-on-year in 2024, and private information such as biometrics, health care, and financial transactions will become the main targets. In this context, Article 1034 of the Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China clarifies the legal attributes of private information, stipulates that the relevant provisions on privacy are applied to its protection, and the Personal Information Protection Law applies when there are no special provisions, which makes private information both “private” and “identifiable” as the intersection of privacy and personal information. Theoretically, there is a dispute over the boundary between private information and sensitive personal information, and the protection model also faces differences in the choice of unification and dualization. In this regard, we can learn from the German “field theory” and combine the principle of proportionality in our country’s Civil Code, refine the rules from the whole chain of collection, use and storage, set up special regulatory agencies, and empower public participation through education, technical tools, public interest litigation, etc., so as to improve the private information protection system and effectively safeguard the rights and interests of citizens.

Information and communication technology based inter-organizational systems enable companies to integrate information and conduct business electronically across different parts of the organization. For organizations embracing blockchain, smart contracts provide automation and operational efficiency for inter-organizational systems. Initially utilised for financial transactions, smart contract are extended beyond banking and deployed in wide number of organizations. Smart contracts are regarded as self-executing type of contract consisting of agreement’s terms embedded directly into the code which plays a vital role in operability for inter-organizational systems, however, smart contract vulnerabilities can arise due to programming errors, leading to security issues. The effects of smart contract vulnerabilities can be significant, including loss of funds, unauthorized access to sensitive information, manipulation of data, and loss of trust in the application leading to catastrophic financial losses followed by legal implications for an organization based on blockchain technology. The goal of smart contracts exploiting vulnerabilities is to discover and eliminate potential security vulnerabilities in smart contract code prior to it being deployed. Detecting vulnerabilities in a timely manner helps to prevent financial losses, unauthorized access, and data manipulation. In order to provide a robust solution to detect vulnerabilities in smart contracts, the proposed methodology presents a novel approach for rapid detection of vulnerabilities by integrating genetic algorithm with isolation forest. Furthermore, enhancing smart contract vulnerability identification with higher accuracy and false-positive rate provides a reliable gateway for organizations to adopt blockchain.

The increasing use of the Internet of Things (IoT) has driven the demand for enhanced and robust access control methods to protect resources from unauthorized access. A cloud-based access control approach brings significant challenges in terms of communication overhead, high latency, and complete reliance. In this paper, we propose a Fog-Based Adaptive Context-Aware Access Control (FB-ACAAC) framework for IoT devices, dynamically adjusting access policies based on contextual information to prevent unauthorised resource access. The main purpose of FB-ACAAC is to provide adaptability to changing access behaviors and context by bringing decision-making and information about policies closer to the end nodes of the network. FB-ACAAC improves the availability of resources and reduces the amount of time for information to be processed. FB-ACAAC extends the widely used eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) to manage access control decisions. Traditional XACML-based methods do not take into account changing environments, different contexts, and changing access behaviors and are vulnerable to certain types of attacks. To address these issues, FB-ACAAC proposes an adaptive context-aware XACML scheme for heterogeneous distributed IoT environments using fog computing and is designed to be context-aware, adaptable, and secure in the face of unauthorised access. The effectiveness of this new scheme is verified through experiments, and it has a low processing time overhead while providing extra features and improved security.

The popularity of blockchain is on the rise as the technology is touted to become an enabler of many existing and futuristic applications. These applications range from cryptocurrency-based financial applications to secure supply chain management, privacy-protected medical data handling, secure yet transparent e-voting, decentralized Internet of Things (IoT), and fault-tolerant Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) towards future 6G communication networks. There are numerous inherent features of blockchain that drive these applications, such as transparency, decentralization, non-repudiation, immutability, pseudonymity, provenance, and lower operational costs. Moreover, the smart contracts further enhance the capabilities of blockchain. Thus, this chapter aims to provide an in-depth understanding of blockchain and smart contracts. In particular, the chapter begins by introducing blockchain as one of the most popular types of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Subsequently, the block structure, transaction process flow, salient features, and the different types of blockchain are presented. Next, the concept of smart contract is discussed along with its salient features and the different blockchain platforms that support smart contracts. Furthermore, the chapter introduces various growing applications of blockchain. Finally, the security aspects of blockchain and smart contracts are briefly discussed since it is an evolving technology.