Security

The Future is a Safe And Dark Web. This Is What It Will Look Like:

This article first appeared on Nesta.org.uk as one of the top finalists in The Decentralised Future Prize essay competition. “Mass surveillance by governments and corporations will become normal and expected this decade and people will increasingly turn to new products and services to protect themselves from surveillance. The biggest consumer technology successes of this decade […]

Creating Unpredictability: Random Number Generator Use Cases

“Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number — there are only methods to produce random numbers.” – John Von Neumann Random number generators (RNGs) are a crucial part of many […]

Scalability Magic: BLS Signatures

Blockchain Scalability Blockchain scalability has likely been one of the most researched topics in crypto environments in the past few years. Regardless of their involvement in the crypto world, almost everyone at this stage is aware of the ridiculously low amount of transactions processed per second of Bitcoin with respect to VISA for example. To […]

Infrastructure Threats to P2P Networks

Internet Backbone It’s fair to say that most people without a deep understanding of networking probably consider the internet to be a globally decentralized network, which is a reasonable assumption though incorrect. Thousands of internet service providers and telephone companies globally all vying to offer connectivity to householders and end-users give the illusion of a […]

A Brief History of Random (In)security

Random Number Generator Hacks and Exploits

Most software and operating systems use random numbers for security processes. And because software is often built with cost and speed in mind, developers tend to use pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs) to create cryptographic keys and other system encryptions. PRNGs are algorithms that use mathematical formulas or precalculated tables to produce sequences of seemingly random […]

Privacy, Blockchain and Onion Routing

Why is Privacy Important? Is Blockchain Anonymous? How can Onion Routing Improve Blockchain?

Foreword Since blockchain was introduced in 2008, it has been regarded as Web 3.0 and is expected to further bring about a great leap in finance and governance for mankind. The blockchain may become an infrastructure like the World Wide Web. If we have begun to protect our privacy on the Internet, then we should […]

Decentralized ID: Bridging Legal and Digital Identities

“It is fair to say that today’s Internet, absent a native identity layer, is based on a patchwork of identity one-offs.” – Kim Cameron, former Architect of Identity at Microsoft The right to identity is a fundamental human right that exists from the moment we are born and lasts for life. This right is recognized […]

GDPR and Distributed Ledger Technologies: An Introduction for Regulatory Compliance

What is data protection and why do we care? I believe if I say “Cambridge Analytica”, or “Facebook user data breach scandal” a lamp will light up in your head. In a nutshell, and particularly as a consequence of the data theft scandal undergone by Facebook in early 2018, the topic of the role of […]

An Introduction to Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance

What is PBFT and what are its main characteristics? Can cryptocurrencies be implemented on PBFT?

In this article, we want to introduce a long-lasting classic: Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance, or PBFT for short. PBFT has already been in existence for over 20 years now, and its birth traces back to the well-known consensus problem in decentralized systems commonly known as the Byzantine Generals Problem. PBFT is not a consensus protocol […]

A Brief History of Random (In)security

Random Number Generator Hacks and Exploits

Most software and operating systems use random numbers for security processes. And because software is often built with cost and speed in mind, developers tend to use pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs) to create cryptographic keys and other system encryptions. PRNGs are algorithms that use mathematical formulas or precalculated tables to produce sequences of seemingly random […]

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