Blockchain-Enabled Accountability Mechanism Against Information Leakage in Vertical Industry Services

Abstract

The emergence of 5 G technology contributes to create more open and efficient eco-systems for various vertical industries. Especially, it significantly improves the capabilities of the vertical industries focusing on content-sharing services like mobile telemedicine, etc. However, cyber threats such as information leakage or piracy are more likely to occur in an open 5 G networks. So tracking information leakage in 5 G environments has become a daunting task. The existing tracing and accountability schemes have nonnegligible limitations in practice due to the dependence on a Trusted Third Party (TTP) or being encumbered with the significant overhead. Fortunately, the blockchain helps to mitigate these problems. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-enabled accountability mechanism against information leakage in the content-sharing services of the vertical industry services. For any information converted to vector form, we use the blockchain technology to ensure that service providers and clients can securely and fairly generate and share watermarked content. Besides, the homomorphic encryption is introduced to avoid the disclosure of the watermarking content, which guarantees the subsequent TTP-free arbitration. Finally, we theoretically analyze the security of the scheme and verify its performance.