Thursday, November 16, 2017

BLOCKCHAINS IN NATIONAL DEFENSE: TRUSTWORTHY SYSTEMS IN A TRUSTLESS WORLD

Download here : Blockchains In National Defense: Trustworthy Systems In  A Trustless World

Source : http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/education/jpme_papers/barnas_n.pdf

Extract from Abstract

The   ability   of the  USAF  to  prevail   in  the highly  contested  environment of 2040  will  be dictated by  its   ability   to   defend   cyber enabled  systems ,  and the  data within  them,  from compromise and manipulation.Yet contemporary  cyber defense  is faltering,  and incremental improvement s   seem  unlikely  to overcome   an  exponentially    growing   cyber  threat.    Thus,  an  entirely  new  model  for  cyber  defense  strategy  is  needed thats met by BLOCKCHAIN.   
Author Details
Neil  B. Barnas,  Major, USAF

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

HashGraph : An overview with example

Hashgraph is a superior consensus mechanism / data structure alternative to blockchain. A decentralized platform without servers built on Hashgraph technology will enable blockchain use cases to run:safe,secure and Fast.This pdf is a straight lift from http://www.swirlds.com

Monday, November 13, 2017

What is a Smart Contract? A Beginner’s Guide

A non technical,easy over view of what simply a Smart Contract means? Smart contracts help you exchange money, property, shares, or anything of value in a transparent, conflict-free way, while avoiding the services of a middleman. The best way to describe smart contracts is to compare the technology to a vending machine. Ordinarily, you would go to a lawyer or a notary, pay them, and wait while you get the document. With smart contracts, you simply drop a bitcoin into the vending machine (i.e. ledger), and your escrow, driver’s license, or whatever drops into your account. More so, smart contracts not only define the rules and penalties around an agreement in the same way that a traditional contract does, but also automatically enforce those obligations.


Tuesday, November 7, 2017

TRANSACTION MALLEABILITY : SIMPLY

Although little old video...but is good to give an easy to understand explanation on What Transaction Malleability is?

TRANSACTION MALLEABILITY : A DEMO TO GET AN OVERVIEW OF WHAT IT IS?

This is a demo of  presentation "Bitcoin Transaction Malleability" Theory in Practice" by Daniel Chechik. The demo simulates a trading website that is vulnerable to Transaction Malleability, by simply not following the transaction correctly. The attacker can exploit this vulnerability to receive more coins to his personal wallet than he originally should have in the first place.

Monday, November 6, 2017

Sunday, November 5, 2017

QUANTUM ATTACKS ON BITCOIN, AND HOW TO PROTECT AGAINST THEM

Download here : Quantum attacks on Bitcoin, and how to protect against them

Source : https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10377.pdf

Extract from Abstract

The key cryptographic protocols used to secure the internet and financial transactions of today are all susceptible to attack by the development of a sufficiently large quantum computer. One particular area at risk are cryptocurrencies, a market currently worth over 150 billion USD. We investigate the risk of Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, to attacks by quantum computers. We find that the proof-of-work used by Bitcoin is relatively resistant to substantial speedup by quantum computers in the next 10 years, mainly because specialized ASIC miners are extremely fast compared to the estimated clock speed of near-term quantum computers. On the other hand, the elliptic curve signature scheme used by Bitcoin is much more at risk, and could be completely broken by a quantum computer as early as 2027, by the most optimistic estimates. We analyze an alternative proof-of-work called Momentum, based on finding collisions in a hash function, that is even more resistant to speedup by a quantum computer. We also review the available post-quantum signature schemes to see which one would best meet the security and efficiency requirements of blockchain applications.

Author Details

Divesh  Aggarwal,Gavin  K.  Brennen,Troy Lee,Miklos  Santha and  Marco  Tomamichel at National University of Singapore, Singapore and Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, Singapore