Research Blockchain as a Risk reducing countermeasure and apply to any (only one) major industry: Financial, cryptocurrency, stocks, accounting, transactions, real estate, court records, home business, technology, illegal drugs, etc.
Be sure to address the OSINT issues only as applicable: information reliability , trust, deep web interactions, sources, ability to close the transaction in time ( availability) , location of the servers overseas and control, levels of Risk, etc.
Assignment can be presented in the form of a 6-8 page paper [with sub-headers to highlight flow ]with APA references; or PPTx of about 40 + slides.
Here is a Summary of Blockchain as a cryptographic countermeasure.
BLOCKCHAIN ELEMENTS
Definition: BLOCKCHAIN IS A SECURE DISTRIBUTED LEDGER
Ledger: Complete chronological records of transactions in a data structure called a BLOCK. Each block is cryptographically bound to its predecessor.
Shared: Many entities share the same ledger with different access rights (R/W)
Distributed: No central server holds all of the blockchain. Every node has the same copies of the ledger-> high availability & resilience. No single point of failure.
Secure / Immutable: Each issuer signs Transaction. Each node validates Transaction by Blockchain governance. Nodes engage in consensus protocol to add a new block to their copy of blockchain. Errors are carved in stone. Non-repudiation not possible.
CRYPTOCURRENCY (BITCOIN, ETHEREUM)
Cryptocurrencies operate on a blockchain.
Transactions are aggregated into blocks, each block assigned (secured) with a unique HASH.
HASH’S are secure cryptographic signatures which link the blocks together
New block is linked irrevocably to the blocks before and after it by its unique HASH,
Once mining software validates (solves) the cryptographic puzzle for the latest block – Result is timestamped and
Block and its HASH are posted to all other computers that were attempting to solve the puzzle.
ADVANTAGES
Blockchain can be used to facilitate all digitized data transactions, property registrations, birth certificates, medical records, bills of lading, smart contracts
Blockchain is decentralized & its ledger is immutable, transactions are (mostly) protected from hacking
Because blockchain is peer-to-peer, people and businesses can interact directly with each other
Inherently more efficient and cheaper than systems burdened with middlemen such as lawyers and regulators.
ARGUMENT FOR NEGATIVES / CHALLENGES
Technology – especially SECURITY. IoT security , especially SCADA systems are sieves
Operational challenges- business models, practical aspects, many agreements, too many actors in ecosystem
Legal & Regulatory & Compliance issues – auto contract execution rule causes responsibility issues if device actions incorrect as executed by blockchain
IoT based-breaches hit as many as 90% of organizations implementing back-end IT systems
Blockchain processing is HUGELY ENERGY INEFFICIENT = real costs
Regulatory push-back will increase dramatically as status quo organizations threatened.
