RATIONALES
Telenti A. et al. wrote a perspective on treating medical data as a
durable asset using blockchain and AI technology1. It
is not so easy to use the blockchain technology for securely storing
medical data as they mentioned. McAfee disseminated “blockchain threat
report.”2 Charles McFarland wrote an article entitled
“Threat Report: Don’t Join Blockchain Revolution Without Ensuring
Security.”3 Blockchain news, scams, vulnerabilities,
malware, and research are reported respectively4. 10
blockchain and new age security attacks are
introduced.5 Yves Longchamp et al. questioned on the
blockchain security.6
The main security problem lies in a consensus mechanism used in
blockchain. According to Investopedia7, “a consensus
mechanism is a fault-tolerant mechanism that is used in computer and
blockchain systems to achieve the necessary agreement on a single data
value or a single state of the network among distributed processes or
multi-agent systems, such as with cryptocurrencies. It is useful in
record-keeping, among other things.”
As far as we know, the decentralized consensus algorithms are all
vulnerable against known attacks including a 51% attack, long range
attack, DDoS attack, P+Epsilon attack, Sybil attack, balance attack, and
BGP hijacking respectively.8,9 In order to use the
blockchain technology, detection and protection mechanisms must be
embedded in blockchains for protecting known vulnerabilities of
consensus algorithms against attacks.
CONCLUSION
In order to securely store medical data using the blockchain technology,
protection mechanisms are needed for protecting known vulnerabilities of
the existing consensus algorithms.
References:
1. Telenti, A., Jiang, X. Treating medical data as a durable asset. Nat
Genet 52, 1005–1010 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-020-0698-y
2.https://www.mcafee.com/enterprise/en-us/assets/reports/rp-blockchain-security-risks.pdf
3.Charles McFarland, Threat Report: Don’t Join Blockchain Revolution
Without Ensuring Security,https://www.mcafee.com/blogs/other-blogs/mcafee-labs/threat-report-dont-join-blockchain-revolution-without-ensuring-security/
4.https://blockthreat.substack.com/
5.Aruba Marketing,10 Blockchain and New Age Security Attacks You Should
Know
https://blogs.arubanetworks.com/solutions/10-blockchain-and-new-age-security-attacks-you-should-know/
6.Yves Longchamp et al., Are blockchains that safe? How to attack them
and how to prevent these attacks, Sept. 2020,https://www.seba.swiss/research/are-blockchains-safe-how-to-attack-them-and-prevent-attacks
7.https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/consensus-mechanism-cryptocurrency.asp
8. Sayeed, S.; Marco-Gisbert, H. Assessing Blockchain Consensus and
Security Mechanisms against the 51% Attack. Appl. Sci.2019,9,1788.
9. Yang, F.; Zhou, W.; Wu, Q.; Long, R.; Xiong, N. N.; Zhou, M.
Delegated Proof of Stake with Downgrade: A Secure and Efficient
Blockchain Consensus Algorithm With Downgrade
Mechanism.IEEEAccess2019,7, 118541−118555.