Discussion Report 1

Article Summary: Hyeon

How Blockchain Could Revolutionize Cybersecurity - Mar 4, 2022 - Forbes

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The current cybersecurity trend shows that hackers are becoming more nefarious and complex with their attacks against organizations and their systems. Attacks such as DDoS are paralyzing and cannot be thwarted or protected against and do not have full proof protections against them. The issue involves how our systems, including security is still centralized which has become more apparent as a detriment rather than perceived as safe and secure. It is a point of failure in which bad actors exploit and target.

The most recent 2017 DDoS attack against Google consumed over 2Tbps which remarkably the organization was able to hold ground. But due to the nature of the attack and how DDoS preys on DNS which currently isn’t secured and is slowly beginning to only fortify itself with secure DNS, the problem lies again, to centralized nature of not only the naming service, but the infrastructure such as databases and how it’s authenticated.

Now Blockchain is not something you would expect to associate security, as it’s obviously shown more related to tokens and cryptocurrencies. However, the technology and infrastructure behind it, is show that It’s built for almost anything and everything the web 3.0 has to offer. The advantage is the decentralized nature of how blockchains work.  The tech isn’t reliant on just a single node or point of presence, as it’s distributed in the ledger style proofing system it uses to replicate and check among itself for integrity. Likewise, such infrastructure coincidentally has shown it’s resilient from current attacks and utilizing this decentralized nature not only shows how security and authentication can be decentralized in nature, but so can the protocols, systems and applications that can be built upon it.

With the advent of automation and big data and artificial intelligence, using those tools can assist in migration and detection as well as building a infrastructure based on block chain easily and reliably so that systems can alert and better protect and even automate defenses. If the bad actors can evolve, why can’t the systems that they attack, and the administrators, as well as the tools they protect these systems with evolve too?  It definitely will help a long way from preventing to prepare a breach notification and face the consequences of an attack. Any advantage against bad actors and hackers is well worth it to prevent the lost of resources and money.

SUMMARIZE THE COMMENTS BELOW

Commenter: Jared

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Hi Hyeon,

I agree blockchain is much more than just cryptocurrencies and can be a very useful tool in the fight against cyber-attacks. As hackers improve and create new attacks, companies will need to continue to update their cyber security systems in order to stay ahead of hackers, and as the article mentions, one application companies should consider is blockchain. The company I work for was recently the victim of a cyber security attack. The attack shut down our systems for 3 days, required the company to hire an outside IT firm, and cost the company over $100,000. One of the reasons the attack was successful was due to an older cyber security system. Since the attack, the company has invested in updated security systems and continues to look into fortifying its cyber security. A decentralized system infrastructure could have potentially prevented the attack or could be something the company could look into. As companies increase their digital assets, sophisticated systems will need to be put in place to protect these assets.

Commenter: Gagan

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Hi Hyeon,

In a unique way, blockchain is transforming cybersecurity. There's a good probability that if you follow blockchain concepts correctly, you'll be able to drastically reduce cybersecurity concerns like identity theft, hacking, and so on. Employers may use blockchain technology to build deep and long-term relationships with their customers, which is a positive thing. Small business owners and entrepreneurs can benefit from blockchain technology when it comes to boosting cybersecurity. Surprisingly, depending on the situation, they can employ this excellent strategy in a variety of ways to address various security flaws in their business networks.Employers may easily protect their critical business data from the prying eyes of hackers, scammers, and other cyber thugs using blockchain. Because blockchain technology encrypts your official data, hackers and other unauthorized individuals are unable to alter it. Employers can benefit from more trustworthy identity management solutions thanks to blockchain. As a result, you can store information about your staff and clients on a blockchain network. You can also assign digital IDs to your staff and customers, which you can use to verify their identification as needed. Smart contracts are another technique to appropriately improve the cybersecurity of diverse enterprises. These are pre-written criteria that must be adhered to throughout transactions. Cybersecurity professionals can use smart contracts to authenticate such transactions without taking any risks.

Commenter: Doyin

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While this Article focuses on the benefits that blockchain can bring to cybersecurity, I think its also important to highlight some of the challenges it may face; Blockchain and distributed ledger technology applications combine the message and the asset in a single token. When an asset is embedded into a blockchain or distributed ledger, possessing the associated cryptographic keys is the only way to retrieve or move the asset. In other words, the key becomes an asset. When the key and the assets are one and the same, anyone who obtains the key can monetize and exploit the asset instantly. As we’ve seen in security breaches in public blockchain settings, such as Bitfinex, Mt. Gox and others, the malicious transfer of ‘value’ can be instantaneous, irreversible and significant. Participants in these systems lost millions of dollars as a result of compromised security systems. However, these attacks exploited vulnerabilities at the application layer—the wallets holding the keys to the assets—rather than the underlying blockchain protocol.

Commenter: AJ

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While this is all accurate, I wanted to add/clarify that all of the blockchain implementations I'm aware of use asymmetric cryptography which means both public and private keys would be in use. Private keys are not published to the blockchain, and protection of private keys is extremely critical to security of the blockchain and associated transactions. Anyone that has bought/sold/mined a cryptocurrency will recognize the "seed phrase" or "key recovery phrase" made of 12 random words that you are asked to write down during wallet creation. This is a seed of all private keys generated by the wallet, but not the private key itself - that is stored within the wallet and used to sign transactions. It is strongly recommended that this seed phrase be written down and stored in a safe, but not stored digitally in any way. If an attacker were to gain access to this phrase they now own your private key and can effectively act as you on the blockchain.

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