Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Science (MS)
Major/Program
Computer Engineering
First Advisor's Name
Kemal Akkaya
First Advisor's Committee Title
Committee chair
Second Advisor's Name
Arif Selcuk Uluagac
Second Advisor's Committee Title
committee member
Third Advisor's Name
Alexander Perez Pons
Third Advisor's Committee Title
committee member
Keywords
zero knowledge proofs, blockchain, authentication
Date of Defense
10-24-2019
Abstract
With the increasing interest in connected vehicles along with electrification opportunities, there is an ongoing effort to automate the charging process of electric vehicles (EVs) through their capabilities to communicate with the infrastructure and each other. However, charging EVs takes time and thus in-advance scheduling is needed. As this process is done frequently due to limited mileage of EVs, it may expose the locations and charging pattern of the EV to the service providers, raising privacy concerns for their users. Nevertheless, the EV still needs to be authenticated to charging providers, which means some information will need to be provided anyway. While there have been many studies to address the problem of privacy-preserving authentication for vehicular networks, such solutions will be void if charging payments are made through traditional means. In this thesis, we tackle this problem by utilizing distributed applications enabled by Blockchain and smart contracts. We adapt zero-knowledge proofs to Blockchain for enabling privacy-preserving authentication while removing the need for a central authority. We introduce two approaches, one using a token-based mechanism and another utilizing the Pederson Commitment scheme to realize anonymous authentication. We also describe a protocol for the whole process which includes scheduling and charging operations. The evaluation of the proposed approaches indicates that the overhead of this process is affordable to enable real-time charging operations for connected EVs.
Identifier
FIDC007846
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5077-5670
Recommended Citation
Gabay, David, "A Privacy Framework for Decentralized Applications using Blockchains and Zero Knowledge Proofs" (2019). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 4348.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/4348
Included in
Computer and Systems Architecture Commons, Data Storage Systems Commons, Digital Communications and Networking Commons, Information Security Commons, Other Computer Engineering Commons
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