A blockchain-based quantum-secure reporting protocol

• Published in: Peer-to-peer networking and applications 2021-09, Vol.14 (5), p.2992-3011
• Main Authors: Banaeian Far, Saeed, Rajabzadeh Asaar, Maryam
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Blockchain; Communications Engineering; Computer Communication Networks; Confidentiality; Cryptography; Engineering; Information Systems and Communication Service; Integrity; Networks; Privacy; Quantum computers; Security; Signal,Image and Speech Processing; Special Issue on Blockchain for Peer-to-Peer Computing; Whistleblowing
• ISSN: 1936-6442; 1936-6450
• DOI: 10.1007/s12083-021-01152-z

The reporting systems are needed to design so that the whistleblower’s privacy, report confidentiality, and report integrity should be under-consideration. Additionally, it is expected that the approved report will be accessible publicly and not changed. We believe that blockchain technology is the best choice for reporting systems’ infrastructure since it provides a transparent and immutable database. This paper presents the first blockchain-based quantum-secure reporting protocol (QS-RP) using multivariate public key cryptography (MPKC). In the QS-RP, a fast verification mechanism is applied, which makes use of the Merkle technique. The QS-RP provides confidentiality to the selectively secure multi-key (C-SSMK) and unforgeability to selectively secure multi-key (UF-SSMK). Additionally, the QS-RP provides several new features such as report confidentiality before report generation, user/whistleblower privacy, and report integrity. The most important feature of the QS-RP is providing the whistleblower’s privacy and report confidentiality against quantum computers. Analysis of the security of the QS-RP indicated the mentioned claims in the random oracle model (ROM). Finally, the QS-RP is compared with other blockchain-based reporting protocols. The comparison shows the QS-RP provides more security features than other reporting protocols, and the performance analysis’s results show that it is 90 % faster in the execution time on the user side, and it is 66 % efficient in the communication overhead in compared to other blockchain-based reporting protocols. Moreover, the QS-RP has no on-chain overhead for whistleblowers.