SBIR Phase II: Novel Blockchain File System using aBFT Consensus

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）项目的更广泛的影响和商业潜力包括增强关键基础设施网络的安全性和信任的能力，包括国防，电网，医疗保健和新兴的自主系统（即，自动驾驶车辆和机器人技术），因为这些系统中的许多系统是使命和生命关键的。拟议的创新将使分布式和自治系统能够基于高度可信的数据源做出决策。更重要的是，该创新解决了客户的迫切需求，即在不确定和不确定的条件下阻止数据泄露并防止网络上的未经授权的活动。所提出的创新将通过将分布式计算容错和共识机制应用于现实世界的关键基础设施网络来增强其实际应用。关键任务系统的数据不断受到攻击者的攻击，攻击速度每年高达10亿次。对于任务关键型系统，泄露的数据是一个严重的问题，包括巨大的经济损失，潜在的使命失败，并在某些情况下，危及生命的后果。保护这些数据/信息是这十年来最大的市场机遇之一，拟议的工作直接解决了信息保障的问题。SBIR第二阶段项目将推进一项创新，解决关键基础设施网络中关键任务数据的数据完整性维护的复杂问题。 所提出的创新通过将最先进的异步拜占庭容错（aBFT）一致性算法的灵活部署与所提出的新颖文件系统创新相结合来简化分布式系统中的一致性和容错的极其复杂的科学，创建非常有用的解决方案，以保护数据完整性，防止其在不同的网络操作条件（包括异步网络条件）下受损（拜占庭和崩溃故障场景、保留所有事务、提供活性保证、维护本地节点状态完整性以及维护数据排序和时间戳的能力）。建议的文件系统解决方案旨在成为一个易于部署的软件平台，在系统的生命周期内保持数据安全、防篡改、可验证和可信。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impacts and commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project include the ability to enhance the security and trust of critical infrastructure networks for applications including defense, electric grids, health care, and emerging autonomous systems (i.e., self-driving vehicles and robotics), as many of these systems are mission- and life-critical. The proposed innovation will allow distributed and autonomous systems the ability to make decisions based on highly trusted data sources. More importantly, the innovation addresses an immediate customer need to stop data breaches and prevent unauthorized activity on networks under flaky and uncertain conditions. The proposed innovation will enhance the practical applications of distributed computing fault tolerance and consensus mechanisms by applying them to real-world critical infrastructure networks. Mission-critical systems data are constantly under attack by adversaries at the rate of a billion times per year. For mission-critical systems, compromised data is a serious problem including huge economic losses, potential for mission failures, and in some situations, life-critical consequences. Protecting that data/information is one of the biggest market opportunities of this decade and the proposed work addresses the concerns of information assurance directly.This SBIR Phase II project will advance an innovation that solves the complex problem of maintaining data integrity for mission-critical data within critical infrastructure networks. The proposed innovation simplifies the extremely complex science of consensus and fault tolerance in distributed systems by combining flexible deployment of state-of-the-art Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerant (aBFT)consensus algorithms with the proposed novel file system innovation, creating highly useful solution to protect data integrity before it can be compromised under varying network operating conditions including asynchronous network conditions (byzantine and crash fault scenarios, ability to retain all transactions, provide liveness guarantees, maintain local node state integrity, and maintain data ordering and timestamps). The proposed file system solution is designed to be an easy to deploy software platform that keeps data safe, tamper-resistant, verifiable, and trusted over the system’s life cycle.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.