The blockchain technology is a game changer to enhance the security of our supply chain, and smart manufacturing. The technology enables the tracking and recording of the history of each transaction in a ledger stored in the cloud that cannot be altered, and when combined with digital signatures, verifies the identity of the participants with its non-repudiation capabilities. The potential weakness of the technology, which is mitigated by the solutions that we are here proposing, is the difficulty in preventing malicious participants from gaining access to public-private key pairs. Commercially available blockchain technologies relying on cloud based methods to manage the key pairs, allow groups of opponents to interact freely with the network. We are proposing several layers of protections to secure strategic supply chain management:
- To insert tamper resistant nanomaterials, acting as Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) in each terminal allowed to participate in the network of the supply chain;
- Use of ternary cryptography to generate key pairs to sign each blockchain with the Ternary Addressable Public Key Infrastructure (TAPKI);
- Use of post quantum cryptographic digital signature algorithms (DSA); and
- Use noise injection techniques with high performance computing (HPC) to increase the costs needed to attack the system.
We will present the prototypes developed at Northern Arizona University (NAU) demonstrating the feasibility of the schemes, and discuss the challenges to deploy this blockchain technology to established manufacturing subcontractors.
CAC/PIV holders can watch or download the webinar here: https://www.dodtechipedia.mil/dodwiki/download/attachments/600342615/2020-01-29-csiac-webinar-blockchain-for-supply-chain.mp4