Twitter Wouldn’t Be Hacked If It Were Backed by Blockchain Technology - Cointelegraph

Twitter Wouldn’t Be Hacked If It Were Backed by Blockchain Technology - Cointelegraph
Blockchain Spreads Its Vines to Root Out Counterfeit Wines and Spirits - Cointelegraph
AI-Blockchain Platform Creates Digital Assets From Personal Data - Cointelegraph
Abra Building Banking Solutions on Stellar Blockchain, CEO Barhydt Says - Cointelegraph

Posted: 18 Jul 2020 09:00 AM PDT

Murphy's law states: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." It always happens with centralized services. A year ago, we saw how half a million Facebook accounts were leaked online, exposing personal data. We will see it many times more with other services. The recent Twitter hack underscores this once again. The accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Mike Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, among others, were hacked to push a fraudulent offer with Bitcoin (BTC).

Writing for the BBC, cybersecurity commentator Joe Tidy opined: "The fact that so many different users have been compromised at the same time implies that this is a problem with Twitter's platform itself." All accounts were vulnerable; it was just a matter of choice for the hackers: Using celebrities is better to "endorse" scams.

The problem is that even if Twitter or any other service with similar architecture continues building the cybersecurity walls around its system, it will become more complicated and expensive, but not safer. The current paradigm of centralized services cannot offer a safer solution for users' authentication.

I have recently written about new technologies that could protect data and digital identity, using the example of Australia and the European experience and how public key certificates could be protected with blockchain technology against distributed denial-of-service and man-in-the-middle attacks. Although my analysis was quite technical and thorough, perhaps it would be better to take a step back and comb through some general yet pertinent details that may enhance data protection.

Here is some terminology for you to use when asking your service provider, your online store or your government about whether they are protecting your personal data:

Decentralized identifiers, or DIDs, is a general framework by W3C with various methods to create and manage personal identifiers in a decentralized way. In other words, developers of online services do not need to create something new if they want to use the potential of decentralized technologies. They can utilize these methods and protocols.
Selective disclosure protocol, or SDP, which was presented last year at the EOS Hackathon by Vareger co-founder Mykhailo Tiutin and his team, is a decentralized method for storing personal data (using DIDs) with cryptographic protection on a blockchain. With SDP, the user can disclose carefully selected pieces of information in any particular transaction.
Self-sovereign identity, or SSI, is a concept that, in simple terms, allows users to be the sovereign owners of their personal data and identity, not third-parties. It implies that you can store personal data on your device, not on Twitter's or anyone else's server. To illustrate the power of the SSI concept, think about this statement: It is easier to hack one centralized system storing millions of accounts than to hack millions of personal devices. But the issue is much deeper. If we ever face a digital dictatorship, the root of this problem will be the absence of the right to control and prohibit third parties (including the government) to store and operate your personal data. The terrible experiment with Uighurs in China is a case in point. The citizens do not have the legal right to say no to the government collecting their personal data. Of course, the Chinese government created accounts without their consent to obtain records of what it considers to be inappropriate behavior.

To put things into perspective, let's go through a hypothetical situation.

Use case: Alice and her digital identity

Alice generates her cryptographic pair: a private and public key. The private key encrypts transactions, using a digital signature; the public key decrypts them. The public key is used to verify whether Alice signed in, signed the contract, signed the blockchain transaction, etc.

To protect the private key, she will store it on a secure hardware device with PIN protection, for instance, on a smart card, a USB authentication token or a hardware cryptocurrency wallet. Nevertheless, a cryptocurrency address is a representation of a public key, meaning Alice can use it as her coin and token wallet.

Although the public key is anonymous, she can also create a verified digital identity. She can ask Bob to certify her identity. Bob is a certificate authority. Alice will visit Bob and show her ID. Bob will create a certificate and publish it on a blockchain. "Certificate" is a file that announces to the general public: "Alice's public key is valid." Bob will not publish it on his server the same way other traditional certificate authorities do now. If a centralized server were ever disabled in a DDoS attack, no one would be able to confirm whether Alice's digital identity is valid or not, which could lead to someone stealing her certificate and faking her identity. This would be impossible if the certificate or at least its hash sum were published on-chain.

With a verified ID, she can perform official transactions, for example, registering a company. If Alice is an entrepreneur, she may want to publish her contacts, such as a telephone number. Using a blockchain is a safer choice because when data is published on social media, a hacker can break into an account and replace it to redirect calls to another number. None of this would be possible on a blockchain.

If Alice goes to a liquor store, she can use her verified DID. The seller, Dave, will use his app to verify and confirm Alice's DID instead of her paper ID. Alice does not need to disclose her name and date of birth. She will share with Dave's app her identifier, which Bob certified, her picture and an "Above 21 y.o." statement. Dave trusts this record because Bob is a certificate authority.

Alice can create various pseudonyms for online shopping, social media and crypto exchanges. If she loses her private key, she will ask Bob to update his record on the blockchain to announce that "Alice's public key is invalid." Therefore, if someone stole it, everyone who interacts with her public key will know that they should not believe transactions signed with this key.

Of course, this is a simplified scenario, but it is not unrealistic. Moreover, some of these processes already exist. For example, the Estonian e-Residency card is nothing more than a smart card with the user's private key. With this card, you can remotely register a company in Estonia or even sign contracts. Being integrated into a larger market, Estonian digital signatures are recognized across the European Union. Unfortunately, its governments still do not protect certificates on blockchains.

Knowledge is power. Users should know that their cybersecurity is not only in their hands, as one might say. Software and social media giants ought to make the shift to improve security standards, and users ought to demand it.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Oleksii Konashevych is the author of the Cross-Blockchain Protocol for Government Databases: The Technology for Public Registries and Smart Laws. Oleksii is a Ph.D. fellow in the Joint International Doctoral Degree in Law, Science and Technology program funded by the EU government. Oleksii has been collaborating with the RMIT University Blockchain Innovation Hub, researching the use of blockchain technology for e-governance and e-democracy. He also works on the tokenization of real estate titles, digital IDs, public registries and e-voting. Oleksii co-authored a law on e-petitions in Ukraine, collaborating with the country's presidential administration and serving as the manager of the nongovernmental e-Democracy Group from 2014 to 2016. In 2019, Oleksii participated in drafting a bill on Anti-Money Laundering and taxation issues for crypto assets in Ukraine.

Blockchain Spreads Its Vines to Root Out Counterfeit Wines and Spirits - Cointelegraph

Posted: 18 Jul 2020 05:00 AM PDT

For wine collectors, provenance is everything. With as much as 20% of all wine circulating the globe deemed to be fake, it's hardly surprising. In days past, sniffing out a bogus burgundy required a good nose and an eye for detail. Now, thanks to blockchain technology, the problem is being resolved at its root — or should that be at the vine?

Sommeliers, vintners, collectors and other connoisseurs of the red stuff go to great lengths to determine authenticity. From the weight of the bottle to eyeing anomalies in the year of production, right down to inspection of the bottle glass, the stamp on the cork and the label glue, the tiniest discrepancy can be the biggest red flag. But somehow, every year, thousands of bottles of counterfeit wine slip the net.

That's because wine forgers also go to great lengths. Manufacturing a brand new bottle of burgundy disguised as a 60-year-old vintage is no easy feat. It isn't always about the bottle's aesthetic either; the taste is just as, if not more, important. Fraudsters have been known to recreate every single note, using a hybrid blend of wines that mimic the flavor of an original — like modern-day alchemists creating gold.

Because to some, gold is essentially what fine wine is — and what forgeries can become. In the past 16 years, the burgundy 150, an index that tracks prices for the most actively traded vintages, has risen by nearly 450%.

Several popular fine-wine indices plotted side-by-side

A climactic fine-wine renaissance occurred between 2016 and 2018 amid uncertainty over Brexit and Donald Trump's presidency, causing some experts to speculate that investors were using wine as a store of value in such times, not unlike gold. Wine's parallels with gold don't end there. As an asset class, fine wines, similar to the precious metal, are extremely scarce, becoming even more scarce whenever someone decides that their $300,000 bottle of 1947 Cheval Blanc is ready to chug.

Others have made the analogy — perhaps slightly more cynically — that vintage wines are more akin to the tech boom in the 2000s, where a ".com" suffix could append a company an extra set of zeros. Similarly, a vintage Hermitage label affixed to any old bottle of plonk could net upward of $10,000. Sure enough, that happens all too often in the wine industry.

Combating counterfeiters

While actual estimates are scarce for obvious reasons, counterfeit wines are thought to be a multibillion-dollar problem. Sour Grapes, a 2016 documentary, recounts the rise and dramatic fall of prolific counterfeit wine fraudster Rudy Kurniawan, who was instrumental in bringing about the counterfeit wine market — and its hefty price tags. But while a notable case, it's just one of many in a vast counterfeiting racket.

And it's not confined to fine wine either. A 2018 report from the European Union Intellectual Property Office finds that in Europe alone, approximately 2.7 billion euros ($3 billion United States dollars) is lost per year due to counterfeit wine and spirits.

The illegal spirits market is potentially a bigger issue, with health complications and deaths arising from bogus gins, vodkas and whiskeys laced with battery acid and even methanol — a toxic chemical used in antifreeze. Attempts to crack down on the liquor fraud haven't been without their merit.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Marton Ven, chief marketing officer of TE-Food — a farm-to-table food traceability solution firm — explained that molecular analysis of spirits, via a system known as Raman spectroscopy, can expose phony liquor. Ven added the caveat, however, that rolling out this process on a broader scale would be both costly and inefficient. The same goes for centralized databases already in use for tracing wine. Due to the issues inherent within centralized databases, the scope for corruption and subversion is relatively broad.

A modern solution to a vintage problem

Fortunately, blockchain verification may have stamped out the counterfeit wine issue for good. Blockchain ecosystem Nem's latest offshoot, Symbol, is a blockchain solution geared toward fighting fraud — specifically within the fine wines sector. Symbol verifies and tracks a large number of transactions per second, enabling raw materials, and their end products, to be traced efficiently. From grape to bottle to the journey on to its final destination, everything tracked through Symbol is recorded on an immutable blockchain, ensuring authenticity at every stage.

Disposable smart contracts ensure data privacy while requiring confirmation of authenticity before payment is released, incentivizing supply-chain intermediaries to verify authenticity independently. The approach can similarly be extended between retailers and customers, closing up remaining gaps in the supply chain.

Dave Hodgson, managing director of Nem Ventures, told Cointelegraph that by making notes of itinerary or product information; bottle, box, crate or pallet of wine tracking; serial-number tracking; and so on, the wine becomes virtually tamper-proof. However, according to Hodgson, Symbol's scope could dig down even further — quite literally:

"It is also possible to extrapolate this further (for higher value liquor, more likely) to have an IoT sensor in the tracking solution to record things such as the temperature, moisture content, or the GPS location of the cases/containers. Additionally, there could be IoT sensors in the soil to detect PH balance, chemicals, pesticide usage, and ripeness."

Symbol isn't the first to harness blockchain in wine verification. In fact, there are myriad blockchain-based solutions on the market, each offering slight variations on the last. A solution from blockchain startup WeCan takes the verification of wine beyond the supply chain, extending it to private auctions and buyers.

Akin to Symbol, WeCan records every facet of information about the wine, from producer to the original vintner and even its previous owners, and tethers it to the blockchain. A scannable QR code exposes the data, which even goes as far as to detail purchase and price history. Camille Ernoult, who is responsible for marketing and communications at WeCan, told Cointelegraph:

"Liquor fraud is a real problem in the industry, with more than 20% of bottles sold being counterfeit. Blockchain could help this matter by tracing the whole value chain from production to sale. This would mean every actor of the chain should enter the information that would then be immutable, time stamped and securely registered on a blockchain platform."

Even one of the Big Four auditing firms, Ernst & Young, has jumped into the blockchain verification game. The Tattoo wine platform, which caters directly to hotels, restaurants and cafes, sells wines straight from the vineyard, excluding interference from within the private market. Each Bottle is "tattooed" (hence the name) with its own QR code, detailing data such as grape variety, types of fertilizers used on crops and even delivery logistics.

Taking verification one step further, Tattoo combines traceability with tokenization. Buyers can buy, and sellers can plug their products on the platform via tokens based on Ethereum's nonfungible ERC-721 token standard.

Blockchain can't block em all

While these solutions may tackle the issue of counterfeiting between merchants and retailers, there's little in the way of stopping refilling once on the private market. According to Ernoult, there's hardly anything blockchain can do in this regard. "One missing piece of the puzzle for blockchain in the use of liquor verification is another actor to secure the bottle and ensure that it hasn't been opened and replaced with something else," she said.

Ven takes a pragmatic view, noting that no traceability system is without its flaws. "I don't know about any safety system which couldn't be subverted," he explained. The goal of blockchain-based traceability is to make adulteration more difficult and expensive so that it will be less profitable and, eventually, not worth the risk.

Similarly, while admitting that blockchain isn't a panacea for countering counterfeiters, Nem's Hodgson suggests that verification at least eases the issue: "There will always be ways to subvert verification systems. While blockchain is not a silver bullet solution for liquor fraud, it dramatically reduces the likelihood of it occurring."

However, Alastair Johnson, founder and CEO of self-sovereign payments and identification platform Nuggets, suggested an alternative: a mandatory Know Your Customer-centric app introduced within private purchases, a stage where arguably the most counterfeit refilling goes unimpeded. Johnson said:

"Through established verified identities for merchants, brokers, and consumers with blockchain tied to unique labels and seals, along with non-fungible tokens you could have an immutable record of provenance that could not only prove at point of purchase but at point of opening."

With KYC-verified customer ID coupled with blockchain's immutable ledger, not only does the counterfeiter run the risk of capture, but subsequent resellers chance reputational damage. But sadly, blockchain didn't exist some 8,000 years ago when wine is believed to have been first created. If it had, perhaps the issue of counterfeiting would never have arisen. Still, with modern practices in place and the use of blockchain verification techniques on the rise, the hope remains that counterfeiting numbers will reduce.

AI-Blockchain Platform Creates Digital Assets From Personal Data - Cointelegraph

Posted: 17 Jul 2020 12:13 AM PDT

Artificial Intelligence (AI) specialist Kneron announced the launch of its KNEO platform on July 16, combining edge AI devices with blockchain technology to create secure and private personal networks.

The Kneron Neural-network Edge-AI Open platform also creates digital assets out of personal data which can be exchanged or sold to the corporations who want them.

Blockchain-connected sensors create private network

KNEO uses blockchain technology to connect a number of edge AI sensors or stems, such as cameras, microphones and thermal sensors.

The term "edge AI" refers to systems which process algorithms locally, rather than sending data for remote processing. This means that KNEO does not require an internet connection, and all data collected is encrypted and secured on an individual private network.

Stems can be controlled by a central app and connect to enhance each other's capabilities as they work together and share data.

Marketplace to sell custom apps and collected data

Kneron has also introduced an edge AI marketplace on Google Play and iOS to encourage the open-source community to develop applications which update, alter or combine edge AI devices to perform specific tasks.

Potential use cases include monitoring home energy usage, health and preventative care, car maintenance, home security and many more.

The marketplace will also connect consumers to corporations who want to buy or use their blockchain-enabled data in digital asset form. Driving data collected over a year may be exchanged for discounted automobile insurance, or shopping, lifestyle and consumption data may be sold to advertisers, brands or market researchers.

Education is key

KNEO will also form a core part of AI education in universities. Major universities in the United States, Taiwan and Hong Kong already use Kneron's technology in courses on AI development.

Developers and hobbyists can start building apps with just a KNEO stem and a Raspberry Pi.

Artificial intelligence has been around as a concept for a hundred years, although recent developments in networking, processing performance and storage have seen a slew of practical improvements.

The combination of AI and blockchain to create secure private consumer AI networks marks a convergence of two of the most touted technologies for the future.

Abra Building Banking Solutions on Stellar Blockchain, CEO Barhydt Says - Cointelegraph

Posted: 18 Jul 2020 05:11 AM PDT

Abra, the company behind the global crypto and fiat wallet and exchange app of the same name, plans to give the world banking services underpinned by Stellar's blockchain — one of the results of the SDF's $5 million investment in Abra earlier in 2020.

During the SDF's digital second quarter review meeting on July 15, Abra CEO Bill Barhydt mentioned Abra's focus on upcoming banking-type features the company is building out. In particular, Barhydt noted an "interest-earning capability" expected to hit the market in the coming weeks.

Abra details upcoming features and capabilities

"This allows consumers, for example, people who aren't even familiar with cryptocurrency, to store dollars and earn significant interest on those dollars," Barhydt said in the meeting, elaborating on the upcoming interest-related featured. He also included availability of the same interest-generating function for crypto holders, as well as staking functionalities.

In general, Abra collaborates with an array of banks, exchanges and other entities for global liquidity on the backend of its platform, as well retail players for app compatibility in real-world use cases, Barhydt explained.

Explaining the bones and structure of Abra's operation behind the customer-facing interest generation, Barhydt mentioned working with approved large institutional players in tandem with its backend, which he labeled as "a very sophisticated lending system."

Working with Stellar's blockchain

Back in May 2020, the SDF dealt Abra $5 million in funding. In light of the investment, Abra expressed plans for work with Stellar's blockchain.

"For us to take this to another level, Abra is building an entirely new part of our business in order to facilitate the movement of funds globally, in real time, using the Stellar network," Barhydt said in the July 15 meeting. "What that will enable for us, is all forms of global lending," he added.

A recent boom in the blockchain space, decentralized finance, or DeFi, solutions show one current avenue for crypto lending and interest earning potential. "We want to take this to another level, and use the Stellar platform to truly enable traditional banking applications at global scale," Barhydt said after mentioning current similar offerings in crypto, such as margin trading and crypto lending.

International peer-to-peer, or P2P, loans, as well as trade finance hold as example use cases listed by Barhydt, which the CEO noted as possible thanks to Stellar, blockchain and crypto assets.

A growing trend, blockchain in general has garnered significant attention from mainstream giants over the past several years, with companies such as Walmart and Facebook looking into various use cases of their own.

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