Blockchain-enabled Fog and Edge Computing: Concepts, Architectures and Applications-Concepts, Architectures and Applications

320 Pages·2020·20.45 MB·\320

by  Muhammad Maaz Rehan (Editor), Mubashir Husain Rehmani (Editor)

Blockchain-enabled Fog
and Edge Computing

Blockchain-enabled Fog
and Edge Computing

Concepts, Architectures, and
Applications
Edited by
Dr. Muhammad Maaz Rehan
and
Dr. Mubashir Husain Rehmani
First edition published 2021
by CRC Press
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
and by CRC Press
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
© 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and
publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use.
The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in
this publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been
obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged please write and let us know so we may
rectify in any future reprint.
Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced,
transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage
or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.
For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, access www.copyright.
com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA
01923, 978-750-8400. For works that are not available on CCC please contact mpkbookspermissions@
tandf.co.uk
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-0-367-45735-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03408-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Lumina Datamatics Limited
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements xiii
Editors xv
Contributors xvii
Part I
First edition published 2021 Fundamental concepts and applications
by CRC Press
of blockchain-enabled fog and edge computing 1
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
and by CRC Press
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN 1 From blockchain Internet of Things (B-IoT) towards
decentralising the Tactile Internet 3
© 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ABDELJALIL BENIICHE, AMIN EBRAHIMZADEH, AND MARTIN MAIER
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and 2 Blockchain concepts, architectures, and Smart city
publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use.
applications in fog and edge computing environments 31
The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in
this publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been
DANIEL MINOLI AND BENEDICT OCCHIOGROSSO
obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged please write and let us know so we may
rectify in any future reprint.
3 A Blockchain-enabled edge supported e-challan
Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced,
mechanism for content-centric Internet of Vehicles 79
transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage
ALI NAWAZ ABBASI, TASHJIA ANFAL, AND MUHAMMAD MAAZ REHAN
or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.
For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, access www.copyright.
com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA Part II
01923, 978-750-8400. For works that are not available on CCC please contact mpkbookspermissions@ Security and privacy issues in blockchain-enabled
tandf.co.uk
fog and edge computing 109
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
4 Hardware-primitive-based blockchain for IoT in fog
ISBN: 978-0-367-45735-8 (hbk) and edge computing 111
ISBN: 978-1-003-03408-7 (ebk)
UZAIR JAVAID, MUHAMMAD NAVEED AMAN, AND BIPLAB SIKDAR
Typeset in Sabon
by Lumina Datamatics Limited
v
vi Contents
5 On blockchain and its complementarity with fog
computing to secure management systems 137
CHAIMA KHALFAOUI, SAMIHA AYED, AND MOEZ ESSEGHIR
6 Security and privacy issues of blockchain-enabled fog
and edge computing 155
IMANE AMELI, NABIL BENAMAR, AND ABDELHAKIM SENHAJI HAFID
7 Scaling edge computing security with blockchain
technologies 187
PAU MARCER, XAVIER MASIP, EVA MARIN, AND ALEJANDRO JURNET
8 Blockchain based solutions for achieving secure storage
in fog computing 217
OUNS BOUACHIR, RIMA GRATI, MOAYAD ALOQAILY, AND
ADEL BEN MNAOUER
9 Differential privacy for edge computing-based smart
grid operating over blockchain 245
MUNEEB UL HASSAN, MUBASHIR HUSAIN REHMANI, AND JINJUN CHEN
Index 295
Preface
Blockchain consists of a decentralized ledger of every single transaction
that takes place in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network formed by the partici-
pants. Blockchain can be permissioned (public), permission-less (private),
or hybrid. If blockchain is public, the validator of the transaction can be
any participant. If the blockchain is private, the validator of the transac-
tion has to be authorized by the blockchain owner. This blockchain owner
can be a single entity validating the transactions and approving the blocks
to be added in the blockchain, or it can be a group of entities resulting
in the form of consortium blockchain. Potential blockchain applications
include electronic voting systems, fund transfers, production, supply chain
management, the pharmaceutical industry, the financial sector, and many
others.
A transaction flow in blockchain operates in the following manner. If
participant ‘A’ requests some transaction, it is broadcast to the associated
P2P blockchain network consisting of computing machines. The transac-
tion is verified by the blockchain participants based on smart contracts,
predefined digital rules agreed on by all stakeholders of the system. Once
verified, the transaction is considered complete. The best known example of
blockchain application is the digital Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The two most
popular transaction verification algorithms in the distributed blockchain
model for establishing consensus are proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-
stake (PoS). In PoW, every newly added block has to generate a hash value
which should be less than the given target value. This requires many retries
and is called ‘mining’. Once done, the newly added block is appended to
the blockchain, and the hash of previous block is added to it to build the
chain. Mining retries make it a time-consuming and energy-intensive pro-
cess. The Bitcoin cryptocurrency uses PoW verification. Instead of mining,
PoS users validate and make changes to the blockchain on the basis of their
existing share (called a ‘stake’) in the currency. A participant with x% share
can validate x% transactions. This approach provides enormous savings on
energy and operating costs. New blockchain systems, like Ethereum, use
PoS verification. In short, the blockchain system provides inherent security
vii
viii Preface
because of distributed nature of the ledger and verification and validation
process of blocks, which makes it extremely difficult to alter transactions.
The term, ‘fog computing’, was coined by Cisco in January 2014 whose
purpose is to make the computing available inside the network instead of
sending data to the cloud for computing and then getting feedback from
cloud. According to Cisco, fog is the standard, and edge is the concept.
A fog device is equipped with computing, storage, and network connectiv-
ity resources, and when it is placed at the edge, the processing or analysis
of real-time data is performed closest to the nodes which generate data.
Thus, switches, routers, embedded servers, video surveillance cameras,
and industrial controllers can be fog nodes. Fog computing is needed when
decision-making and suggested action is required in milliseconds for situa-
tions when thousands or millions of devices across a large geographic area
are generating data. Some applications of fog computing are: (i) locking a
door, (ii) applying train or car brakes, (iii) zooming a video surveillance
camera, (iv) opening a valve if a pressure reading has reached a thresh-
old, and (v) alerting the technician to make preventive repair. As a result
of fog computing, decision-making in sensitive situations becomes fast;
sensitive traffic remains inside the network premises for processing and
decision-making; and less-sensitive information can be sent to the cloud for
big data analytics and feedback in the form of up-to-date strategy rules for
fog nodes and offloading of huge volume of unnecessary traffic from core
network to the cloud.
In the emerging paradigm of fog computing, in which in-network com-
puting near the data producers is on the rise, blockchain-enabled transac-
tions on fog nodes seem a promising solution. For example, if a voting
system is based on blockchain, then fog and edge nodes would be the poll-
ing stations and the data producers would be voters, the polling staff, and
the election commission software. In this, and so many other scenarios,
consensus methods and smart contracts can be defined by the blockchain
owners for transparently recording everything on fog nodes and later save
it to the central cloud for long-term use and analysis. However, there are a
number of integration issues in this scenario. For example, a government
may consider using a blockchain developed by a third party as a threat or
vulnerability and develop their own blockchain with proprietary consensus
mechanisms and smart contracts. For different requirements and environ-
ments (e.g., factories, universities, banking, voting), both consensus and
smart contracts would be different.
Considering the aforementioned importance of integration of blockchain
with the emerging fog computing paradigm, this book aims to unveil the
working relationship of blockchain and fog and edge computing to solve
different everyday problems. The book has been designed in such a way that
the reader will not only understand blockchain and fog and edge comput-
ing but will also understand their coexistence and their collaborative power
to solve different problems. We have given special attention to privacy and
Preface ix
security issues related with the blockchain-enabled edge computing para-
digm. Overall, this book contains nine chapters which are divided into two
parts. Part I covers all fundamental concepts of blockchain and the applica-
tions of blockchain together with edge computing, and Part II covers the
security and privacy issues of blockchain-enabled edge computing.
Part I: Fundamental concepts and applications
of blockchain-enabled fog and edge computing
In Chapter 1, authors discuss Ethereum with respect to its capability
to develop new models of distributed ownership and Tactile Internet.
Recent progress on Ethereum and open challenges are discussed in detail.
The chapter also discusses similarities and differences between Bitcoin-
based blockchains and Ethereum-based blockchains. The  comparison
determines that Ethereum is a better choice as a blockchain platform.
The authors also argue that Ethereum is better than other blockchains
because of a number of salient features including its cooperative and
friendly working with artificial intelligence and robots and also that it is
highly compatible with decentralized edge computing solutions. As a result,
Ethereum-based solutions would birth a new hybrid form of collaboration
in which intelligence and automation are at the centre, and humans would
be at the edges. The authors conclude the chapter with open research chal-
lenges and future work.
Chapter 2 is a review article in which the authors discuss the interworking
of the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G in the presence of blockchain tech-
nologies keeping in view the top-tier Smart city environment, New York
City. The authors offer some pragmatic views of different evolving dis-
ciplines based on several projects in which they are involved. The survey
discusses in detail the requirements of IoT with edge structures; 5G cellu-
lar connectivity in urban and suburban environments, cyber-security, and
blockchain; Smart city IoT applications with and without blockchains and
edge nodes; and the applications of all of these in the realm of health, sup-
ply chain, surveillance and ‘ring of steel’, insurance, and banking. At the
end, the authors state future research directions.
In Chapter 3, the authors focus on the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) envi-
ronment and present a blockchain-based solution for traffic challan result-
ing from speeding in the absence of speed cameras and traffic wardens.
Vehicles use permissioned blockchains on highways and elect the miner
node. Offending vehicles are detected by neighbours and then the offend-
ing event transaction is validated by all neighbours that noticed the offense.
The transaction is added to the block by the miner. Once, the miner reaches
the edge node, a block offloading point at the petrol pump or rest area, it
offloads the block which is added to the blockchain of that road.
In Chapter 4, the authors focus impersonation and tempering attacks on
IoT devices and provide a hardware-based solution for them in the presence