Tag Archives: Blockchain

Encryption and Key Management in AWS – Comparing KMS vs. CloudHSM

A secure data protection using encryption depends more on secure key management processes than the encryption itself. Although enabling encryption looks quite trivial, managing the underlying Key management lifecycle processes and handling the associated cryptographic operations always been a daunting challenge! The challenges are too many till we really know..beginning from key generation and issuance, key ownership, key usage, privileged… Read more »

Exploring Hyperledger Fabric v1 – Building your first network (BYFN)

It was quite easy ! Building a private blockchain using Hyperledger Fabric looked relatively simple when I tried building a couple of demos (similar to my Private Ethereum experience)! Lately, I don’t have the luxury of my big old machines at Oracle so I used my own free-tier account on AWS (Thank you AWS). I was able to quickly put… Read more »

Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) – Future proofing for quantum-safe encryption !

Everything is hackable! During the RSA Conference 2017 Crypto panel, Prof. Shamir (the letter “S” in the RSA) said, “I think there is a higher chance that RSA could be broken by a mathematical attack.” and he also wondered to note “Quantum Computers” will be a reality soon! That said, the evolution of practical quantum computers are not far away, according… Read more »

Unpacking HyperLedger Fabric 1.0 – Under the hood of a Permissioned Blockchain

It’s been a while I had been following the “HyperLedger” project initiatives under Linux foundation –  it is growing faster than I thought (Not sure, when Oracle will join HyperLedger..probably they are annoyed by HyperLedger use of RockDB, CouchDB)! I attempted to test drive HyperLedger 0.6 before — it didn’t get me anywhere with too many dependencies.  That said, a couple… Read more »

Deciphering Blockchain – Role of Cryptographic Hashes and Digital signatures

In a Blockchain infrastructure, trust is built using cryptographic hash functions and Public-key cryptography using digital signature mechanisms.  If we unpack the building blocks of a typical blockchain infrastructure – It relies on a multi-party peer-to-peer transactional network backbone without relying on a central authority. On the blockchain network, the peers create transactions, collaborate on transactions, validate and verify the transaction… Read more »

Anatomy of the Blockchain and understanding “Proof-of-Work”

We keep hearing the hype about Blockchain particularly its guarantee for securely providing tamper-resistant immutable record keeping. What it basically means that Blockchain records every transaction on the network, whether it is a single transaction of a payment or multi-step transaction of a workflow — Each transaction is represented as a block. Typically, the resulting blockchain ledger will be represented… Read more »

Blockchain – Cutting through the hype !

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First, I am not a BitCoin investor or miner (perhaps in the future)…but it’s been a while I had been following BitCoin’s underlying technology called “Blockchain”!  In fact, Bitcoins value hangs on the trust provided by Blockchain technology! Quite fascinating – Blockchain facilitates a way where multiple parties who remain anonymous can trust and collaborate each other using a consensus-based protocol… Read more »