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GLASS: Towards Secure and Decentralized eGovernance Services Using IPFS

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Computer Security. ESORICS 2021 International Workshops (ESORICS 2021)

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Abstract

The continuously advancing digitization has provided answers to the bureaucratic problems faced by eGovernance services. This innovation led them to an era of automation, broadened the attack surface and made them a popular target for cyber attacks. eGovernance services utilize the internet, which is a location addressed system in which whoever controls its location controls not only the content itself but also the integrity and the access of that content. We propose GLASS, a decentralized solution that combines the InterPlanetary File System with Distributed Ledger Technology and Smart Contracts to secure eGovernance services. We also created a testbed environment where we measure the system’s performance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Lib2p: https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p.

  2. 2.

    Code can be found at: https://github.com/aaoi990/ipfs-kad-dht-evaluation.

  3. 3.

    The host machine was a VM which ran on Ubuntu 20.04 x64 OS, with 4 CPU cores, 8 GB of RAM, and a 40 GB HDD.

  4. 4.

    DHT configuration: https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p-kad-dht.

  5. 5.

    Noise Protocol: https://noiseprotocol.org/.

  6. 6.

    K-bucket: https://github.com/tristanls/k-bucket.

  7. 7.

    Code can be found at: https://github.com/aaoi990/ipfs-kad-dht-evaluation/tree/main/perf.

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Acknowledgments

The research leading to these results has been partially funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, through funding of the GLASS project (Grant Agreement No. 959879).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Blockpass ID Lab, School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, EH10 5DT, UK

    Christos Chrysoulas, Amanda Thomson, Nikolaos Pitropakis, Pavlos Papadopoulos, Owen Lo & William J. Buchanan

  2. Computer Engineering and Informatics Department, University of Patras, Patras, Greece

    George Domalis, Nikos Karacapilidis, Dimitris Tsakalidis & Dimitris Tsolis

Authors
  1. Christos Chrysoulas
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  2. Amanda Thomson
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  3. Nikolaos Pitropakis
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  4. Pavlos Papadopoulos
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  5. Owen Lo
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  6. William J. Buchanan
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  7. George Domalis
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  8. Nikos Karacapilidis
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  9. Dimitris Tsakalidis
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  10. Dimitris Tsolis
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Christos Chrysoulas , Nikolaos Pitropakis or Pavlos Papadopoulos .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik, Norway

    Sokratis Katsikas

  2. University of Piraeus, Piraeus, Greece

    Costas Lambrinoudakis

  3. Polytechnique Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Nora Cuppens

  4. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    John Mylopoulos

  5. University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Greece

    Christos Kalloniatis

  6. Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Weizhi Meng

  7. University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Steven Furnell

  8. Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Frank Pallas

  9. Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft gGmbH, Berlin, Germany

    Jörg Pohle

  10. Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    M. Angela Sasse

  11. Norwegian Computing Center, Oslo, Norway

    Habtamu Abie

  12. University of Trento and Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy

    Silvio Ranise

  13. Università degli Studi di Genova, Genoa, Italy

    Luca Verderame

  14. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Genoa, Italy

    Enrico Cambiaso

  15. Indra, Alcobendas, Spain

    Jorge Maestre Vidal

  16. Indra, Alcobendas, Spain

    Marco Antonio Sotelo Monge

A Appendices

A Appendices

1.1 A.1 Libp2p Node Initialisation

figure b

1.2 A.2 Random Walk PeerId Creation

figure c

1.3 A.3 Transforming Content to a CID

figure d

1.4 A.4 A Node Providing Content

figure e

1.5 A.5 Distributing Content to the Closest Peers

figure f

1.6 A.6 Creation of the Datastore

figure g

1.7 A.7 Calculating the Closest Peers Using the XOR Metric

figure h

1.8 A.8 Finding Providers

figure i

1.9 A.9 Result of the “Finding Providers” Query

figure j

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Chrysoulas, C. et al. (2022). GLASS: Towards Secure and Decentralized eGovernance Services Using IPFS. In: Katsikas, S., et al. Computer Security. ESORICS 2021 International Workshops. ESORICS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13106. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95484-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95484-0_3

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