Hardened Blockchain Infrastructure

世界已经对其很大一部分活动进行了“数字化”，到目前为止，这一趋势还处于初级阶段。产品和服务交换开始以有意义和可扩展的方式直接促进各方之间的信任，而不依赖于受信任的第三方。关键的使能技术是区块链技术。即使在这个早期阶段，人们预计它们会更可靠，在地理上也会更广泛，但一个令人担忧的事实是，它们可能在越来越多的方面不可靠。区块链的安全和隐私(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(例如影响人类健康的操作)。在这个与我们的行业合作伙伴KN？X Industries Inc.合作的项目中，我们主要是探索加强对区块链相关交易和价值存储的访问的方法，但预计这些发现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。该项目旨在为强化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。其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，适用于广泛的区块链应用。我们提案的主要部分涉及安全保证任务的部署，以及通过架构内置的安全增强功能。最近发生的几起事件表明，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，故障可能对公共安全造成灾难性影响。随着复杂性和范围的增加，系统故障的可能性只会增加，但增加的集成也会使安全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，对更广泛的社会和行业合作伙伴都有长远的好处。

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.