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You're reading from  Hands-On Blockchain with Hyperledger

Product typeBook
Published inJun 2018
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781788994521
Edition1st Edition
Concepts
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Authors (6):
Nitin Gaur
Nitin Gaur
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Nitin Gaur

Nitin Gaur, is the director of IBM's Blockchain Labs, and an IBM Distinguished Engineer.
Read more about Nitin Gaur

Luc Desrosiers
Luc Desrosiers
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Luc Desrosiers

Luc Desrosiers is an IBM-certified IT architect with 20+ years of experience.
Read more about Luc Desrosiers

Venkatraman Ramakrishna
Venkatraman Ramakrishna
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Venkatraman Ramakrishna

Venkatraman Ramakrishna is an IBM researcher, with a BTech from IIT Kharagpur and PhD from UCLA.
Read more about Venkatraman Ramakrishna

Petr Novotny
Petr Novotny
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Petr Novotny

Petr Novotny is a research scientist at IBM Research, with an MSc from University College London and PhD from Imperial College London, where he was also a post-doctoral research associate.
Read more about Petr Novotny

Salman A. Baset
Salman A. Baset
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Salman A. Baset

Dr. Salman A. Baset is the CTO of security in IBM Blockchain Solutions.
Read more about Salman A. Baset

Anthony O'Dowd
Anthony O'Dowd
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Anthony O'Dowd

Anthony O'Dowd is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM, focusing on Blockchain. He led IBM's contribution to the design and development of the new smart contract and application SDKs found in Hyperledger Fabric v2. Anthony has also made significant contributions to Hyperledger Fabric documentation and samples.
Read more about Anthony O'Dowd

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Other considerations


There are a few other considerations to keep in mind apart from the previously mentioned aspects. They are briefly explained in the following sections.

Consensus, ACID property, and CAP

A consensus model will never go to 0 because when NoSQL became the standard, various NoSQL systems solved their problems by understanding this CAP theorem, and the RDBMS enterprise community held steadfast to their ACID properties. Blockchain might well provide the primitives to break CAP and maintain ACID. Here are some thoughts.

CAP

Cap stands for:

  • C—Consistency: Consensus guarantees only one truth of what happened and in what order
  • A—Availability: The fact that all calls to the blockchain are asynchronous allows the invoking application to make progress while ensuring consensus and durability (chaining also guarantees this)
  • P—Network partition: Consensus, again, prevents split-brain with conflicts when things get back together after a network partition

ACID

ACID stands for:

  • A—Atomicity: The chaincode programming model is an all-or-nothing behavior, which allows you to group activities together. Either everything happens, or it doesn't.
  • C—Consistency: We believe the new world of NoSQL fudges this one. I believe this means the same as the C in CAP.
  • I—Isolation: Isolation indicates that two transactions are serialized, which is exactly what block construction and chaining does.
  • D—Durability: The chaining and replication all over the network ensures that if one or more nodes go down, data won't be lost. This is why everyone wants to bring a node and why those nodes should not be not co-located.

Attestation – SSCs are signed and encrypted

In secure service containers (SSCs), the software, operating system, hypervisors, and Docker container images cannot be modified. Certificates may be included in the SSC so that they can probe themselves into being genuine to a remote a party. For example, including an SSL certificate when building SSCs helps ensure that you're speaking with a genuine instance, since the SSL certificate always stays protected (encrypted) within the SSC.

Use of HSMs

According toWikipedia, a hardware security module (HSM) is a physical computing device that safeguards and manages digital keys for strong authentication and provides cryptoprocessing. These modules traditionally come in the form of a plugin card or an external device that attaches directly to a computer or network server.

Administering a high-security device such as an HSM can be a real challenge in relation to sufficient security and controls. In fact, today's standards mandate certain methods and levels of security for HSM administrative (and key management) systems.

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Published in: Jun 2018Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781788994521
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Authors (6)

author image
Nitin Gaur

Nitin Gaur, is the director of IBM's Blockchain Labs, and an IBM Distinguished Engineer.
Read more about Nitin Gaur

author image
Luc Desrosiers

Luc Desrosiers is an IBM-certified IT architect with 20+ years of experience.
Read more about Luc Desrosiers

author image
Venkatraman Ramakrishna

Venkatraman Ramakrishna is an IBM researcher, with a BTech from IIT Kharagpur and PhD from UCLA.
Read more about Venkatraman Ramakrishna

author image
Petr Novotny

Petr Novotny is a research scientist at IBM Research, with an MSc from University College London and PhD from Imperial College London, where he was also a post-doctoral research associate.
Read more about Petr Novotny

author image
Salman A. Baset

Dr. Salman A. Baset is the CTO of security in IBM Blockchain Solutions.
Read more about Salman A. Baset

author image
Anthony O'Dowd

Anthony O'Dowd is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM, focusing on Blockchain. He led IBM's contribution to the design and development of the new smart contract and application SDKs found in Hyperledger Fabric v2. Anthony has also made significant contributions to Hyperledger Fabric documentation and samples.
Read more about Anthony O'Dowd