This project aims to shed more light on the overall research question, how to design high assurance blockchain governance software, and can such protocols scale to Internet Voting Protocols.

(RO) To advance the state of the art of high assurance cryptographic software, especially for blockchain governance protocols and voting protocols.

(WP1) To achieve (RO), we start by working towards a high assurance implementation of a blockchain governance protocol (e.g. the one used by Concordium) and an existing blockchain voting protocol, such as the Open Vote Network, or Election Guard. If there is sufficient progress in the design of a software-independent protocol we will retarget our research to such a protocol. This will use existing software projects developed at AU: SSProve, ConCert and various libraries for high assurance cryptographic primitives. AU will take the lead for this WP.

(WP2) The Concordium blockchain provides a secure and private way to put credentials, such as passport information, on the internet. In this project we aim to integrate this with legacy ID infrastructure, such as MitID. We will investigate how to reuse such blockchain based identities for internet voting. We aim to address (4) above in this way. Concordium will take the lead for this WP.

(WP3) Implementation of the cryptographic protocol. Based on the results from (WP1), we propose to develop an open-source library that makes our high assurance blockchain voting technology available for use in third-party products. We envision to release a prototype similar to Election Guard (which is provided by Microsoft), but with a blockchain providing the ID infrastructure, as well as functioning as a public bulletin board. ALX will take the lead for this WP.

Scientific value
Internet voting provides a unique collection of challenges, such as, for example, vote privacy, software quality, receipt freeness, coercion resistance, and dispute resolution. Subsets of them can be solved separately, here we aim to guarantee vote privacy and software quality by the means of a privacy-preserving and accountable blockchain and formally verify substantial parts of the resulting voting protocol.

Capacity building
The proposed project pursues capacity building by training a PhD student. Alexandra will build capacity in rust, smart contracts and high assurance cryptographic software.

Business value
The project is highly interesting to and relevant for the industry. There are two reasons why it is interesting for Concordium. On the one hand, voting is an excellent application demonstrating the vision of the blockchain and, on the other hand, Concordium will as part of the project implement a voting scheme to be used for decentralized governance of the blockchain. More precisely, the Concordium blockchain is designed to support applications where users can act privately while maintaining accountability and meeting regulatory requirements.

Furthermore, it is an explicit goal of Concordium to support formally verified smart contracts. Obviously, all these goals fit nicely with the proposed project, and it will be important for Concordium to demonstrate that the blockchain actually supports the secure voting schemes developed in the project. With respect to governance, Concordium has a need to develop a strong voting scheme allowing members of our community to vote on proposed features and to elect members of the Governance Committee. The project is of great interest to the Alexandra Institute to apply and improve in-house capacity for implementing cryptographic algorithms. The involvement of Alexandra will guarantee that the theoretical findings of the proposed project will we translated into usable real world products.

Societal value
Internet voting was stalled for three years in Switzerland due to insecure protocols and implementations. We aim to develop technology to improve the security (audits) of such protocols and implementations. Around 5 billion dollars were lost since 2018 due to insecure blockchain implementations, often effecting retail investors. Our project aims to improve the state of the art of cryptographic software, and thus influence regulation on minimal quality requirements for blockchains, similar to existing Swiss regulation for e-voting.

January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2025 – 3 years.

Total budget DKK 7,5 million / DIREC investment DKK 1,9 million

The main research problems are:

1. To identify safety and security requirements (including threats, attacker models and counter measures) for IoT systems, as well as the inherent design limitations in the IoT problem domain (e.g., limited computing resources and a limited energy budget).
2. To organize the knowledge in a comprehensive model. We propose to extend attack‐defense trees with strategic game features and quantitative aspects (time, cost, energy, probability).
3. To transform this new model into existing “computer models” (automata and games) that are amenable to automatic analysis algorithms. We consider stochastic priced timed games as an underlying framework for such models due to their generality and existing tool support.
4. To develop/extend the algorithms needed to perform analysis and synthesis of optimal response strategies, which form the basis of quantitative risk assessment and decision‐making.
5. To translate the findings into instruments and recommendations for the partner companies, addressing both technical and organizational needs.
6. To design, evaluate, and assess the user interface of the IoT security tools, which serve as important backbones supporting to design and certify IoT security training programs for stakeholder organizations.

Throughout the project, we focus on the challenges and needs of the partner companies. The concrete results and outcomes of the project will also be evaluated in the contexts of these companies. The project will combine the expertise of five partners of DIREC (AAU, AU, Alexandra, CBS and DTU) and four Work Streams from DIREC (WS7: Verification, WS6: CPS and IoT systems, WS8: Cybersecurity and WS5: HCI, CSCW and InfoVis) in a synergistic and collaborative way.

Business value
While it is difficult to make a precise estimate of the number of IoT devices, most estimates are in the range 7‐15 billion connected devices and expected to increase dramatically over the next 5‐10 years. The impact of a successful attack on IoT systems can range from nuisance, e.g., when baby monitors or thermostats are hacked, over potentially expensive DDoS attacks, e.g., when the Mirai malware turned many IoT devices into a DDoS botnet, to life‐threatening, e.g., when pacemakers are not secure. Gartner predicted that the worldwide spending on IoT security will increase from roughly USD 900M to USD 3.1B in 2021 out of a total IoT market up to USD 745B.

The SIOT project will concretely contribute to the agility of the Danish IoT industry. By applying the risk analysis and secure design technologies developed in the project, these companies get a fast path to certification of secure IoT devices. Hence, this project will give Danish companies a head‐start for the near future where the US and UK markets will demand security certification for IoT devices. Also, EU is already working on security regulation for IoT devices. Furthermore, it is well known that the earlier in the development process a security vulnerability or programming error is found, the cheaper it is to fix it. This is even more important for IoT products that may not be updatable “over‐the‐air” and thus require a product recall or physical update process. The methods and technologies developed in this project will help companies find and fix security vulnerabilities already from the design phase and exploration phase, thus reducing long‐term cost of maintenance.

Societal value
It is an academic duty to contribute to safer and more secure IoT systems, since they are permeating the society. Security issues quickly become safety incidents, for instance since IoT systems are monitoring against dangerous physical conditions. In addition, compromised IoT devices can be detrimental for our privacy, since they are measuring all aspects of human life. DTU and Alexandra Institute will disseminate the knowledge and expertise through the network built in the joint CIDI project (Cybersecure IoT in Danish Industry, ending in 2021), in particular a network of Danish IoT companies interested in security, with a clear understanding of companies’ needs for security concerns.

We will strengthen the cybersecurity level of Danish companies in relation to Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things (IoT) security, which are key technological pillars of digital transformation. We will do this by means of research and lectures on several aspects of IoT security, with emphasis on security‐by‐design, risk analysis, and remote attestation techniques as a counter measure.

Capacity building
The education of PhD students itself already contributes to “capacity building”. We will organize a PhD Summer school towards the end of the project, to disseminate the results, across the PhD students from DIREC and students abroad.

We will also prepare learning materials to be integrated in existing course offerings (e.g., existing university courses, and the PhD and Master training networks of DIREC) to ensure that the findings of the project are injected into the current capacity building processes.

Through this education, we will also attract more students for the Danish labor market. The lack of skilled people is even larger in the security area than in other parts of computer science and engineering.

February 1, 2022 – January 31, 2025 – 3 years.

Total budget DKK 25,10 million / DIREC investment DKK 6,74 million