Hardened Blockchain Infrastructure

强化的区块链基础设施

• 批准号: 532079-2018
• 负责人: Zilic, Zeljko
• 金额: $ 5.83万
• 依托单位: McGill University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Collaborative Research and Development Grants
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2019-01-01 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=692157
• 关键词: Hardened; Blockchain; Infrastructure

The world has undertaken the "digitalization" of a good part of its activities, and this trend has been in its infancy up till now. The product and service interchanges are starting to facilitating directly the trust between the parties without relying on trusted third parties, in a meaningful and scalable manner. The key enabling technology is that of blockchains. Even at this early stage, they are expected to be more dependable and geographically over-reaching, but a worrisome fact is that they might not be dependable in an ever-increasing number of ways. The security and privacy (to a degree) of the blockchains requires improvements, especially if they impact high-value (e.g., financial transactions) or safety-critical operations (e.g., those impacting human health). In this project with our industrial partner KNØX Industries Inc., we are primarily exploring the ways to harden the access to blockchain-related transactions and value storage, but expect that the findings will be applicable to wider classes of systems. We intend to integrate the complementary expertise of the team members varying from network security and formal verification methods and their applications.This project aims to set a sound basis for hardening the blockchain infrastructure that will overcome the existing limitations and costs of improving the security. Its strategic role is in providing the tools and methodologies to realize reliable and long-lasting software-intensive systems, useful in a wide range of blockchain applications. The major parts of our proposal deal with deployment of security-assurance tasks, as well as through architecting the built-in security enhancement features.Several recent incidents are indicative of our vulnerability in the age of digital infrastructure, as biomedical, energy distribution, and aerospace areas increasingly rely on digital infrastructure, the failures can be catastrophic to public safety. With increases in complexity and scope, the likelihood of system failures will only increase, yet the increased integration also makes security even more taxing in terms of time and money. Given this, our proposal is timely, with long-term benefits to both wider society and the industrial partner.

世界已经对其大部分活动进行了“数字化”，而这一趋势迄今为止仍处于起步阶段。产品和服务的交换开始以一种有意义和可扩展的方式直接促进各方之间的信任，而不依赖于可信的第三方。关键的使能技术是区块链。即使在这个早期阶段，他们也被期望更加可靠和地理上的超越，但令人担忧的事实是，他们可能在越来越多的方面不可靠。区块链的安全性和隐私性（在一定程度上）需要改进，特别是如果它们影响高价值（例如，金融交易）或安全关键操作（例如，影响人类健康）。在与我们的工业合作伙伴KNX Industries Inc.的这个项目中，我们主要是探索如何加强对区块链相关交易和价值存储的访问，但预计研究结果将适用于更广泛的系统类别。我们打算整合团队成员在网络安全和正式验证方法及其应用方面的互补专业知识。该项目旨在为加强区块链基础设施奠定坚实的基础，以克服现有的限制和提高安全性的成本。它的战略作用是提供工具和方法，以实现可靠和持久的软件密集型系统，在广泛的区块链应用中非常有用。我们的提案的主要部分涉及安全保障任务的部署，以及通过架构内置的安全增强功能。最近的几起事件表明了我们在数字基础设施时代的脆弱性，因为生物医学，能源分配和航空航天领域越来越依赖数字基础设施，故障可能会对公共安全造成灾难性的影响。随着复杂性和范围的增加，系统故障的可能性只会增加，而增加的集成也使安全性在时间和金钱方面更加繁重。有鉴于此，我们的建议是及时的，对更广泛的社会和工业合作伙伴都有长期利益。