Blockchain Cybersecurity, Trust and Privacy

This book provides the reader with the most up-to-date knowledge of blockchain in mainstream areas of security, trust, and privacy in the decentralized domain, which is timely and essential (this is due to the fact that the distributed and P2P applications is increasing day-by-day, and the attackers adopt new mechanisms to threaten the security and privacy of the users in those environments). This book also provides the technical information regarding blockchain-oriented software, applications, and tools required for the researcher and developer experts in both computing and software engineering to provide solutions and automated systems against current security, trust and privacy issues in the cyberspace.

Cybersecurity, trust and privacy (CTP) are pressing needs for governments, businesses, and individuals, receiving the utmost priority for enforcement and improvement in almost any societies around the globe. Rapid advances, on the other hand, are being made in emerging blockchain technology with broadly diverse applications that promise to better meet business and individual needs. Blockchain as a promising infrastructural technology seems to have the potential to be leveraged in different aspects of cybersecurity promoting decentralized cyberinfrastructure. Blockchain characteristics such as decentralization, verifiability and immutability may revolve current cybersecurity mechanisms for ensuring the authenticity, reliability, and integrity of data.

Almost any article on the blockchain points out that the cybersecurity (and its derivatives) could be revitalized if it is supported by blockchain technology. Yet, little is known about factors related to decisions to adopt this technology, and how it can systemically be put into use to remedy current CTP’s issues in the digital world. Topics of interest for this book include but not limited to:

• Blockchain-based authentication, authorization and accounting mechanisms
• Applications of blockchain technologies in digital forensic and threat hunting
• Blockchain-based threat intelligence and threat analytics techniques
• Formal specification of smart contracts
• Automated tools for outsmarting smart contracts
• Security and privacy aspects of blockchain technologies
• Vulnerabilities of smart contracts
• Blockchain for securing cyber infrastructure and internet of things networks
• Blockchain-based cybersecurity education systems

This book provides information for security and privacy experts in all the areas of blockchain, cryptocurrency, cybersecurity, forensics, smart contracts, computer systems, computer networks, software engineering, applied artificial intelligence for computer security experts, big data analysts, and decentralized systems. Researchers, scientists and advanced level students working in computer systems, computer networks, artificial intelligence, big data will find this book useful as well.

About the Authors

Reza M. Parizi is the director of Decentralized Science Lab (dSL) at Kennesaw State University, GA, USA. He is a consummate technologist and security researcher with an entrepreneurial spirit. He is a senior member of the IEEE, a member of the IEEE Blockchain Community, and ACM. Prior to joining KSU, he was a faculty at the New York Institute of Technology. He received a Ph.D. in Software Engineering in 2012 and M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Software Engineering and Computer Science respectively in 2008 and 2005. His research interests are R&D in blockchain, smart contracts, federated learning, and emerging issues in the practice of secure AI-run world applications.

Ali Dehghantanha is the director of Cyber Science Lab in the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. His lab is focused on building AI-powered solutions to support cyber threat attribution, cyber threat hunting and digital forensics tasks in Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial IoT, and Internet of Military of Things (IoMT) environments. Ali has served for more than a decade in a variety of industrial and academic positions with leading players in cyber security and AI. Prior to joining UofG, he has served as a Sr. Lecturer in the University of Sheffield - UK. He is an EU Marie-Curie Fellow alumnus and an IEEE Sr. member. He received his Ph.D. in Security in Computing in 2011 and his M.Sc. in Security in Computing in 2008.

Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo holds the Cloud Technology Endowed Professorship at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), San Antonio, TX, USA. In 2015 he and his team won the Digital Forensics Research Challenge organized by Germany's University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He is the recipient of the 2019 IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing (Middle Career Researcher), 2018 UTSA College of Business Col. Jean Piccione and Lt. Col. Philip Piccione Endowed Research Award for Tenured Faculty, British Computer Society's 2019 Wilkes Award Runner-up, 2019 EURASIP JWCN Best Paper Award, Korea Information Processing Society's JIPS Survey Paper Award (Gold) 2019, IEEE Blockchain 2019 Outstanding Paper Award, Best Paper Awards from IEEE TrustCom 2018 and ESORICS 2015, Fulbright Scholarship in 2009, 2008 Australia Day Achievement Medallion, and British Computer Society's Wilkes Award in 2008. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society, an IEEE Senior Member, and Co-Chair of IEEE Multimedia Communications Technical Committee's Digital Rights Management for Multimedia Interest Group.